Nowadays any kid with something to say will say it on their blog and the people doing graffiti really are nothing more than common criminals. They have nothing to say and aren’t using graffiti to say something at all- it’s and endless repeat of their nickname- and not only are finger-wagging former punks like myself calling them on the error of their ways, they’ve completely lost their peers who look upon art and architecture a little differently. And this defaces architecture.

Leave only footprints and take only memories.

Graffiti changed for me when some really wealthy kids started stickering the stop signs in my parent’s quiet suburban streets and inexplicably leaving their tags in the middle of intersections on the cement around 1996. The kids who were rumored to have done it were far wealthier than I, owned big old SUVs and wore European designer faux-hip-hop wear- remember those awful visors? Whether or not they were creating art had nothing to do with whether or not they were doing something good or evil. Art was an excuse they used incorrectly.

No. I think this is kind of clever, but I live in a city where a “thoughtful stencil” shows up every block and at this point, it’s just crappy.

"Umm… what? When you can’t afford to buy your own home it’s god’s way of telling you that you need to go to college or graduate school. I did, I got a better job, and everything became right with the world. Renting is not the natural order of things.",

Ah yes, more education is always the key to a better life. Unless of course you plan on working in the arts like I do. My grad school loans are putting me so deep into debt that I’ll be lucky if I own a home by the time I’m 50.

on the *art* discussion, i think this is not graffiti, this is actually literature, best kind of it even: everybody reads it and it makes you think about deep stuff

S wht? s tht rt smhw wrthwhl? N, t’s nt, t’s stll slss.

Heh, my neighborhood is covered in grafitti, it didn’t keep me away. But it does disappoint me that ever week or two either I or my landlord have to go try and scrub silver paint of the bricks on the front of the house. (at least they’re not mean enough to get it in the grout).

I do know my neighbors fairly well. As far as whatI bring to the neighborhood? How about a polite, quiet neighbor that can be asked to watch a kid for the afternoon, as my neighbor has fequently done? Or one that cares about his doorstep enough to help the landlord keep clean of grafitti like I mentioned above? Or how about a neighbor that’s just plain better than the heroin/crack addict that could afford the rent on my place as well?

I love how you assume I’m rich and I “invaded” some neighborhood. I make about as much as a primary school teacher, and my neighbors think I roll in the dough. I could choose to live in the ‘burbs for about the same amount I guess, but then I’d have to pay to commute, there wouldn’t be 6 unique restaurants within 5 blocks of me to eat at on the cheap and the apartment wouldn’t have nearly the sense of style as the 100+ year old building I live in now. Nobody I’ve talked to that lives around here likes having to scrub the grafitti, and we don’t even care about the alley. They can have the alley, it’s for trash anyway. Just keep it the fuck off the sidewalks and front of buildings.

Oh, and yes, I’m glad this candy person is doing these sayings in chalk. But it’s a great minority compared to the rest of the stencils out there.

This is a positive way to use the “clash of aesthetic ideals” to protect a vibrant low income area from colonization and cultural destruction by wealthy people with no taste.

Don’t worry, the thing will rub off eventually, with all the people walking over it, not to mention the elements doing their share. Come on now. It’s a pavement.

One of my favourite tags of this type is in the centre of Warsaw- I think it might have been an advertisement once, hard to tell at this point, but there’s a whole area of sidewalk where some of the tiles are marked like bonus fields in a video game. You can walk around like a loon and pretend you’re playing until you reach the tile that says ‘Game Over’. :D

You don’t have a town council to do that for you? In London, at least in regular neighbourhoods, the graffiti people have to do more and more acrobatics to have their bit up for more than a week. I suppose its easy to care less about graffiti when you know it wont last.

I don’t mean to attack you personally, but you et people who like to say their neighbourhood is so colourful and ethnic not realising how patronising that is, or I’ve met people who think of poverty like a tourist attraction, and it disgusts me to no end. The system is set up to fail people here: as you say, it may even be cheaper in the suburbs, but jobs are always in the centre, so tack on the commute, inevitably eating out because of the time it takes to make it home, and etc, and you end up paying more. People in an entry level job aren’t making much more then a working person, and so move into an area that suits their income. but their income inevitably increases, and even if it doesn’t the competition for a flat justifies rent increases. So for instance in Dalston, the Labour government decided it was to close to centre so the people who live there now have to make way for City boys, and they use the Olympics to accomplish this.

Empirical evidence loses here because we all know what happens. I’ve lived in London for many years, know people of all ages, and maybe two people who own their own house or flat. /And/ they’re from the same obscenely rich family [I'm not counting council flats, btw, which may bring the tally up a bit, but it wouldn't be owning in the same sense]. So maybe its different in the US. I don’t know.

There was some “clever” advertising done at one point by a company that selectively cleaned a dirty piece of public property. I can’t dig up the case, but I know the city in question was peeved, even though no “damage” was done. They probably got written up on some “failure to obtain the necessary license/permission” rules or similar. Chalk or other “gone after a rain or few” methods may have similar issues.

That all said, I find some graffiti attractive and have entertained the thought of securely parking a stripped (no glass, trim or other removeable/breakeable bits), pure-white basecoat painted motor vehicle body in a neighborhood that is often “tagged” and leaving a box of good spraypaint inside. Remove tags and re-park as needed until desired “urban camouflage” has been applied, then properly prep, seal and clearcoat the result. Aside from the legality of parking a “nonoperative motor vehicle” and/or “distributing spraypaint to minors” I think it would produce interesting results.

In the case of these “inspiring stencils”, I don’t think I like them personally but I’m not the one to ask about it. Ask the public with which they interact on a daily basis.

Later,
-cajun

Beat me to it.

I love stuff like this, but yeah, please do it in chalk.

In fact, the more I think about it, the less I consider stenciled letters “art”. I’ll catch hell for this one, I’m sure.

#23 use graffiti to keep an area poor? So you’d prefer a neighborhood with poor schooling, lack of nourishment beyond the quik-e mart and liquor store, and a high violent crime rates just to keep the “culture”? Because these vaunted graffiti-covered neighborhoods come with all that as well.

Don’t be afraid of change and growth. Just because a neighborhood gets wealthier, doesn’t mean it has to sacrifice it’s culture. Even urban neighborhoods that used to be considered a suburb when they were built develop their own sense of style and culture.

But I think as a civilisation we have to own up to the fact that our cities are disgusting anyway. I’m much more eager to rail against the ubiquity of advertising then graffiti. Advertising is at least if not more ugly, and far more prevalent.

When it comes to graffiti, context is everything. It serves a very useful purpose when done on an abandoned building, and I don’t see how it can do any real harm on the pavement, unless indeed because the pavement is the only place left one can look without being bombarded by advertising.

An interesting aspect of the debate is how much is demanded from graffiti writers and how little is demanded from urban planners. I mean, the pavement wasn’t art, why do you expect a graffito on the pavement to be art? If I said hey how are you, would you ask if that was an attempt at poetry?

And no, I don’t feel sorry for you because of your grad school loans. Sorry, you’re knocking on the wrong door.

There’s a word that describes people who cannot feel good about themselves without taking a cognitive dump on the less fortunate or the less successful. That word is “arrogance.”

As for comparing a sidewalk to Rocky Mountain National Park: Gimme a break, wouldja? Please?

OK, I’m done.

Yes, and if it were some hazardous biological weapon being applied to the sidewalk instead of paint, I’m sure our opinions (“we” being those who approve of these messages) would indeed be quite different.

But *as it is*, you see, this is a harmless phenomenon.

If the messages aren’t abusive, then there is no reasonable objection to letting them be put there.

Especially since they will quickly be worn away by the footsteps of passers-by. –In this respect, they are much more unobjectionable even than the most beautiful “tag,” since no one ‘need’ pay for their removal.

There are way too many stupid rules these days, and we ought to applaud those who break the unimportant ones in good-natured ways.

If I’m walking down a street in a reflective mood, I’d like to be able to follow my own train of thought, but if there must be an intervention, I agree with tinyxl and antinous that the questions themselves could be more affirmative.

Perhaps such psychological interventions (alongside the more usual political ones) could be used to subvert hoardings etc.? They are after all spaces that have already been enclosed, and can be reclaimed!

I know individuals who put as much (or more) work into their “grafitti” as some of the best “fine” artists. This includes everything from tags to multiple story murals. Because something is beyond your understanding, or outside of your realm of taste, you call it not worthwhile or tasteless. What “use” does Jackson Pollock’s work have? What intrinsic “worth” does Kandinsky’s work have?

@#27 use graffiti to keep an area poor?…Because these vaunted graffiti-covered neighborhoods come with all that as well…..Even urban neighborhoods that used to be considered a suburb when they were built develop their own sense of style and culture.

I don’t believe ZikZak used the word “poor” anywhere in the post. Also, your opinion of “poor” neighborhoods shines in your post. I know many grafitti covered neighborhoods that manage to nourish their children well, school them expertly and avoid violent crime. I grew up in one of them. In your head “working class” equates to “poor” and “graffiti covered” equates to “place to get robbed.” Maybe you should make more friends from those places. They could teach you a couple things about change and growth.

Style and culture are subjective ideas. I however have never copied style or wanted to be a part of a culture from a suburb. These places that you say were considered a suburb when they were built, I’m assuming they aren’t anymore. So it seems like the suburb had nothing to do with the “style” or “culture” that subsequently developed there.

In New York they have rent controlled apartments (not nough of them, I’m sure). I’d like to see that spread beyond Manhattan.

It’s the only way of stopping the rich from gobbling up all the habitable neighborhoods and pushing the poor and middle class residents out.

(comment art/vandalism)

This isn’t a piece of self-aggrandizing scribble, this says something to me.

When someone just uses some crazy font to mark their territory, even if there are are nice colors and great technique, I still just think that it’s a way to pee on the wall.

While it’s not right for someone to go vandalizing public property, at least have something to say when you do it, please.

Do excuse me, but I found your comment a bit ignorant. The fear is emphatically not that culture disappears throuh gentrification, but that people do. Most people in cities don’t own their homes, so if property prices start rising, they wind up evicted. Reason enough to sabotage any attempt to dress up a neighbourhood.

Ironically, in London, graffiti and gentrification are hand and hand, what with the exodus of hipsters North, South and East of Shoreditch. People /want/ to move into an area now because of a Banksy stencil and all the clever graffiti. It really is revolting. Artists move in, make an area hip, young professionals take their place, followed by the horrid City people. I personally await the Yuuzhan Vong invasion to sort it all out.

Thought that was pretty cool.

http://www.robbieconal.com/books.html

I may not have written precisely enough there. I didn’t mean to imply that you personally cannot feel good about yourself “without taking a cognitive dump on the less fortunate or the less successful.”

I was criticising the attitude, not any person in particular.

to quote myself again, “No one promised you a lifetime career as a buggy whip manufacturer.” All of my friends who put 10 years in the arts moved on to computer-based design work and do painting, music, sculpting as a hobby. Money is leaving the arts in a massive exit- people just don’t pay $12 for a cd if they can download it for free, people don’t pay to see movies multiple times when they can buy the DVD once. Think carefully what your goals are in life and plan accordingly- it will save you massive financial headaches.