Canvas: Original – 1973, SJK 171 “Red Fire,” Red Letters and numbers, Purple and Yellow Design, front and back of canvas photo’s on Hand Built and Stretched, Medium: Permanent Markers, Approximate: 30”x 18” – donated to The Hip Hop Museum by SJK 171 (Steve Kesoglides)

SJK 171 (aka Steve the Greek) is one of the earliest New York City graffiti artists. He began writing in 1968 under the name SJK 171 with Mike 171, who grew up on the same Street in Washington Heights. 

SJK 171 is generally credited with originating the “squiggly lines,” a style of outlining graffiti that ten years later was used by Keith Haring. He is also credited with starting the use of arrows in graffiti writing around this time. He is also known as “King of the A Trains” because his graffiti dominated the A subway line of the New York City Transit Authority.

Later, he was one of the founding members of the United Graffiti Artists, a New York City graffiti collective. 

SJK 171 has donated numerous items to The Hip Hop Museum, and we caught up with him to talk about his early writing days, his donations to The Hip Hop Museum, the current state of graffiti, and much more.

Adam Aziz: I spoke with Chor Boogie recently, and he mentioned that Phase 2 didn’t like the term graffiti because he found it discredited the art. What are your thoughts on that?

SJK 171: He wasn’t talking like that when he was with us. He mainly concentrated on doing his artwork and going further with his artwork and style. Because I was, I was painting right alongside him. And he always liked what I was painting. I liked what he was painting. He used to say, let’s hit the subway, put some more pieces on. We were cool. We were very cool. Because he was really, he was really a good artist. I got to know him well. But things changed, and he started speaking a little differently about graffiti. 

AA: You were one of the originators of the art form. How did that even start? Was it simple tagging, and then it went from there?

SJK 171: We had the bigger kids here, a little older than us. They started painting on rocks, writing their names like Cowboy Billy and Bobby One. So we caught on from there and started writing our names in shoe polish in different areas and then using markers. And then somehow, because I had to take the train to go downtown, I started marking up the walls on the subways, the cars and stuff like that. Then I started to see Taki’s name. Then, other names started popping up, such as Baby Face 86. You can’t say you were in that scene if your name was nowhere near those names.

Taki was going downtown because he was delivering stuff and writing his name on poles, and that’s how he became popular. And I was going downtown because I was going to my father’s photo shop on 27th Street. He was a photographer. He had us doing deliveries, so I started writing my name too. I was writing my name on the walls on the subways. Then Frank 207, I met him in school. I got him into writing. He never wrote before. I got Turok 161 into writing, and then we just blew out. We just expanded…spray paint and then started doing pieces on the subways. 

AA: Why did you get in touch with The Hip Hop Museum?

SJK 171: I told them I had all this stuff. I also used to DJ. We would throw parties at UGA. I was lucky to have photos. A lot of these guys didn’t have photos—a lot of them don’t have them—but I was able to photograph to try to keep a timeline of stuff.

SJK 171 DJing photo donated to The Hip Hop Museum

AA: How much did music influence your early days of graffiti?

SJK 171: We would listen to music, then there would be parties, we would do house parties. Then it turned out that we wanna dress nice. That came from somebody who came to our block. He used to go into Manhattan, all dressed out, decked out. He had a little band-aid on his forehead to show that he was in a fight, but he was dressing really casually and cool, putting cologne on and dressing with a scarf, like shades, and be-bopping around. I said, yo, who is this guy? And so we started finding out how to get dressed up nice as kids. And we started going downtown to Delancey Street and finding out where all this fashion is. 

We started going to the stores. We would buy shark skin material for pants. We made custom, tailored pants. My friend sent me something that said people were dressing like that in Brooklyn, but we were doing it in Manhattan. That was the style. I have a picture of me as a kid with my playboy shoes and my shark skin, and I’m wearing a cashmere coat. 

Then the DJing came in because we were going to a lot of the parties, and that’s how everything just blew out. And the graffiti blended in with that because it made you feel good. It was a combination. As you paint, you dance and you DJ. And then if you like DJing, you know, some people, not everybody was a DJ, but they liked the dance.

Original Pioneer Turntable, complete with cover, early 1970s Model PL-15D-II donated to The Hip Hop Museum by SJK 171

AA: You made many amazing donations to the Hip Hop Museum. What did you think the first time you heard they were building an actual physical museum space for Hip Hop?

SJK 171: When I heard that, I felt connected because I knew what I had. The graffiti connected well with the music because we were doing that. I had a lot of photos, but a lot of them got wet in my basement, but I was able to hold on to some stuff. 

I was offered to sell the canvas I donated twice. It’s an original from ’73. But I wasn’t doing art or graffiti for money. 

AA: You’re an originator of the “squiggly” outline on graffiti pieces.

SJK 171: Yes, the squiggly outline. And the arrows as well. I did both. Nobody was doing that, as is mentioned in so many graffiti articles. Years later, I discovered that I was the originator from people who look back and profile graffiti pieces. Whatever I did on the subways was seen. 

AA: What’s the place for graffiti in 2025?

SJK 171: The youth are coming into the art world and the Hip Hop genre. Through The Hip Hop Museum and how you guys are putting it together, they will understand the importance of graffiti within Hip Hop.   Follow SJK 171 on Instagram.

Read more interviews on The Hip Hop Museum!