In the early days, by creed, a graffiti artist would ask neither for permission nor compensation. Now, after courting the former, artists at 5Pointz were receiving the latter. Graffiti was once a countercultural threat that conservative forces roundly maligned as a racially coded stand-in for urban delinquency. Now, graffiti had not only helped catalyze gentrification of one of the city’s fastest growing neighborhoods, but was also being handsomely rewarded for it, with legal recognition by a judge and jury. – The New Republic