I know what you mean. A town or neighborhood can look like a God-forsaken hellhole to everyone else, but it's still loved by those who are from there, because that's where they grew up, came of age, etc.
A close corollary of this is that one often finds and makes one's closest friends in shared oppressive and even traumatic situations and life stages : high school, armed forces, college fraternity hazings. It doesn't matter if you and your buddies ate shit, what counts is that you ate shit TOGETHER, you have that in common, and that's what bonded you, and made you friends.
For me, graffiti got underway in 1970 when I was a freshman in high school, so it was part of stepping out into a bigger, riskier world.
There was also humor, like what I saw written on a blank billboard on the Graham Avenue or Grand Street station of the 14th Street Canarsie Line :
IF YOU CAN PISS ABOVE THIS LINE THE NYC FIRE DEPT. NEEDS YOU !
____________________________________________________________________
Graffiti seemed at its worst in 1979 and 1980, when I contemplated taking buses, and occasionally walked over the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, to avoid it : also because of the March-April 1980 transit strike. In 1984, I started going home to Ridgewood from Manhattan the long way, via the Queens Blvd. and 7 lines, and long walks, to avoid the L and M lines, unwind, and get some exercise.
I associate the decline of graffiti from 1984 to 1989 with the improvement of my social life.