Not all graffiti culture developed in New York. For a long time, independently, graffiti scenes of their own also grew in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

In Los Angeles, after the race-related riots of 1943, the so-called cholo gangs emerged from the subculture of Mexican-American youths. Cholo comes from the Aztec word xolotl (dog). Though it was used derogatorily in the USA for persons of Mexican origin, the cholos revamped the term in the 1960s to make it a symbol of their pride, marking out their territory with sophisticated black lines.

In Philadelphia too, graffiti developed from gang culture. At first, members just wrote the name of their gang in their own district, until at some point graffiti 'writers' began to spread their own pseudonyms all over the city.

With pichação, a distinct and internationally relevant form of graffiti was born in the Brazil of the 1980s from the lettering of heavy metal band logos, which often put one in mind of runes. Unlike graffiti, soon regarded as art in Brazil, pichaçãoworks were subject to rigorous prosecution. Monochromatic and mostly written on walls, with their letters all the same height and the same distance apart, they are often installed using small paint rollers.