Mook

Mook is the pseudonymous tag of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania man Michael Monack.

Biography Monack's first graffiti was tagging the South Side and Shadyside neighborhoods, but after his tags were abated, he began placing his tags in hard to reach places, including tall bridges and highway overpasses. Monack was known to use the monikers "Mook" as well as "human hater". He was a part of a graffiti crew that called themselves the "Value Krew" or VK. The name means "knucklehead or idiot". After the media coverage of Monack's "Mook" tagging in the Pittsburgh area, it is possible that multiple copycats have applied graffiti using the moniker "Mook".

Legal issues On October 31, 2001, police arrested 18-year-old South Side resident Michael Monack and arraigned him on three counts of receiving stolen property. Police were led to his grandmother's house by an anonymous letter and other clues. On October 16, the police executed a search warrant at Monack's residence and found paint and other graffiti supplies. He was supposed to turn himself in on October 19, but he had fled the area instead. In October 2002, he was sentenced to thousands of dollars in fines and community service in exchange for his guilty plea to criminal mischief and defiant trespass. Monack was spotted in the Armstrong Tunnel at 5 am with two juvenile delinquents. He attempted to escape apprehension and fled to the South Tenth Street Bridge where he was arrested. Monack was charged with criminal mischief, conspiracy, possessing an instrument of a crime and corruption of a minor for being the group's "ringleader." During a 2002 hearing Judge Robert E. Colville said: “You’re not a criminal … but there’s some portion of you that may be brain dead.”

After graffiti As of 2004, Monack had become a tattoo artist in Pittsburgh. When asked by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about his opinion on the latest crop of the city's graffiti artists, he described them as "garbage." Though, even years after ceasing his tagging, Mook's "infamy precedes him in many circles of the city."