BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Earlier this month, police busted “Cost” — one of the city’s most prolific graffiti taggers back in the 1990s — on W. 13th St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves.
Police said they spotted Cost, 45, a Queens native whose real name is Adam Cole, on Sun., Oct. 5, around 4 a.m. strolling back to his Porsche Cayenne, which was parked on the same block. He was reportedly carrying an extendable pole with a wet brush affixed, and his clothes were covered in what appeared to be a goopy paste.
After an arrest for graffitiing in the late ’90s, Cost had gone on a self-imposed 16-year hiatus. But his moniker — affixed to building walls by a glutinous mixture of water and flour or starch — popped up again across Manhattan starting in 2010, and one particular cop took notice.
Police Officer Colin Sullivan read up on the Cole — who had given extensive interviews over the years to newspapers and online sites — and showed published photos of him to his Sixth Precinct colleagues, urging them to be on the lookout now that the plastered placards had reappeared.
“The tags I saw recently appeared to be pretty fresh,” Sullivan said. “Everyone in my unit was aware of what this guy looks like. I’ve been boring these guys to death with Adam Cost pictures.”
The research and vigilance paid off when Sullivan’s partners in the Greenwich Village precinct’s Cabaret Unit thought they recognized the man out for a super-early Sunday morning stroll.
“We noticed this man who fit [Cole] to a ‘T’,” Sergeant Michael Alfieri said.
Alfieri, along with Police Officers Craig Sikorski and William Morris, then looked up and saw a rectangular “Cost” poster roughly 2 feet high and 3 feet wide — fresh adhesive still dripping from it —on scaffolding about 20 feet above a rare wine shop. A glue-filled container sat on the sidewalk below.
The glue drum’s lid was next to Cole’s parked Porsche. Additional glue drums and more long brushes could clearly be seen through the windows of the luxury S.U.V., according to cops.
Police executed a search warrant on the vehicle two days later and recovered adhesive and brushes, as well as hundreds of stickers and posters with “Cost” printed on them.
Cole was charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti and possession of a graffiti instrument in nine separate incidents this year.
Cole has recently taken to Instagram, where his thousands of followers can view his latest tags around the five boroughs.
Meanwhile, police have their own video of the resurgent graffitiist.
A minutes-long surveillance tape outside one tagging location, Bar Naná on Gansevoort St., shows Cole step out of his Porsche and get to work brushing on Cost posters with the sticky wheat paste.
“This stuff is impossible to get off the wall,” Sullivan said. “That’s why it’s so expensive to remove.”
