The Mark Of Borf

Some of the work is in such well-trafficked places that you wonder how he didn't get caught before. Granted, it takes only seconds to spray a stencil -- press the cardboard cutout against the wall so there's no drip, wield the can with your other hand -- but still. On pillars outside a bakery just north of Dupont Circle on busy Connecticut Avenue? On the sign over the Roosevelt Bridge? For that one, Borf had to get onto a catwalk that's maybe 20 feet in the air and spray not one but two layers of paint to make a three-dimensional half-face that seemed to have just peeked in front of the sign. The eyes danced, as if asking, "Do you really want to go to work today?"

(After a few weeks, the stencil was "buffed," which is the word graffiti artists use when someone removes their work. Borf didn't seem to get nearly as upset about buffing as he did when peers scribbled their graffiti over his, which he considered exceedingly disrespectful.)

Borf considers himself a crusader for youth; he drew inspiration from the children's author Shel Silverstein and from something called situationism, an obscure avant-garde movement popularized in 1960s France.

He said in the spring that he'd been reading a book by the situationist Guy Debord "about modern capitalism" and "how the status quo is maintained and perpetuated by a series of spectacles." Borf often finished his graffiti early in the morning, just in time to see a spectacle he despises -- rush hour. "People all heading downtown," he said. "Like, it's ridiculous if you think about it. Like, Orwellian-ridiculous. And they do this with so-called free will."

His clothes are usually frumpy and speckled with paint, and the baseball cap covering his dark hair has a broken band . He is fond of phrases like: "Property is theft, as Prudhomme says." He labels the Cosi cafe chain "boojy" (for bourgeois) and despises Starbucks. ("Instead of police on every corner we have Starbucks on every corner," he says.) He thinks young people have it really bad. He hated high school, which is why he finished early, taking his last few courses online. It bothers him that those younger than 18 can't vote, "as much as I don't believe in voting or anything." He complained that folks in stores assume "all young people shoplift," and when he's reminded that he himself shoplifts spray paint, he says that's just more evidence of how messed up society is.

He said he was an activist long before he got into graffiti. The first protest he attended was against capitalism in September 2002. It's possible he would have been arrested if he'd gotten there on time, he said, but the protest was "too early."

Borf scrupulously followed media coverage and Internet rumors about him and was pleased to be contacted by a reporter ("wow!" he typed when first messaged through the graffiti Web site StencilRevolution.com). But he refused to reveal his real name. For one thing, he feared getting arrested. He also knew much of his appeal lay in the mystique -- he is Borf, master illusionist, omnipresent but invisible. To maintain the mystery, he sidestepped questions about what "Borf" meant, if anything, and how he scaled rooftops. He offered clues and then backtracked, contradicting himself, or shrugging and saying "secret."

He imagined himself like the Zapatistas, the Mexican rebels who cover their faces. "Who I am is not as important as what I want," he said.

Some time ago, someone placed an "I Saw You" ad in the Washington City Paper, saying, "Who are you BORF? . . . Let's meet." On Flickr.com, a Web site where people share their photo collections, there were hundreds of photos of Borf's graffiti, with comments such as, "He keeps me entertained as I ride the metro. go borf!" and "Are you sick of this dork yet?"

The face is Borf's most striking signature in the District. There's a playfulness to the expression and an artistry to the image. Sometimes the face appears alone and sometimes in different contexts, like on the image of a teenager holding a can of spray paint.

Because of the very nature of graffiti, it's hard to know how much of the Borf oeuvre can be attributed to this one teenager. To bolster his claim that he's the real guy, he brought along his hand-cut cardboard stencils to Capital City Records on 10th and U streets, where he was spray-painting an installation for a street art show organized by a graffiti artist named Cory Stowers. Borf unfolded a cardboard stencil crusted with spray paint and almost as tall as his own 6-foot-1 frame. It was the Borf face on the body of Black Panther Huey P. Newton holding a rifle.

Borf claimed credit for graffiti in New York City, Raleigh, N.C., and San Francisco. He is familiar with Manhattan, he said, having lived on the Upper East Side until he was 10. As for San Francisco, he said, he and a friend took Greyhound.

Over time, there was so much of his graffiti, a Borf backlash emerged. Borf said he's not responsible for graffiti saying "Borf is gay," and he certainly didn't write "Borf hates God" on a church. In February, a 27-year-old man was arrested for writing anti-Borf graffiti on the back of a sign in Logan Circle. He got as far as "Borf is a do-" before the police caught up with him.

Borf considers this his unwitting legacy: He's democratizing graffiti. People are decorating the District's streets, even if it's just to make fun of him.

What will he do when he gets older? he was asked months before he was arrested.

"I'm not older," he said.

Staff writers Clarence Williams and Nia-Malika Henderson contributed to this report.