New Haven Connecticut is the largest city in the state and the cultural center with museums, restaurants, and a general urban growth that never really slowed down. Like most of the East coast cities; it has a large Black and Puerto Rican population. As well as Italian. Its close proximity to NYC gave it a lot of style and energy. NYC was a short train ride away and actually the nickname was just The C.I., short for The CITY.
In New Haven, many writers visited from larger cities like Boston and NYC, or other parts of Conn. Graffiti hit its peak there around 1990 and by 96, there was very few serious active writers still living there, after that. Nowadays it’s quite different and it’s had a resurgence in more ways than just the amount of new writers and graffiti.
Philadelphia is its own city with very little to no connection to NYC. It’s insular and prides itself on having its own flavor, slang, and movement.
Graff in Philly is part of growing up. It’s baked into the culture. Every kid has a good handstyle that they learned or copied from schoolmates, people in their community, or older family members. Graff is a very deep rooted secret subculture with every possible type of person as a participant. In Philly there are more Black writers than in other smaller American cities. There are also many active bombers that are over the age of 50.
NYC just has everything, everyone, and at any time, nothing compares to NYC at all.