Graffiti

Give us a few warm days and the graffiti artists or 'taggers' are out and about. To tell you the truth, most of them are less 'artists' than simply a fool with a paint can.

When taggers are caught, they don't really suffer much, maybe a little community service of picking up trash next to the expressways. Hey! I have an idea--why don't the judges make them paint over their 'art'??? If they were true artists it would cut into the core of their being. If they were simply taggers, then wielding a six-foot paint roller might make their arms hurt so much that they might think before tagging again.

I have to say that many years ago when we visited Paris, I was horribly discouraged by all the graffiti along their highways. It was a total mess of crap painted on top of crap. Why don't the governments hire some of those 17% unemployed to repaint? Tourists still bring in money to places like that, so cater to the tourist, don't scare them away!

Anyhoo, here are a few pics of some of the graffiti from last year. Yes, I've had these pictures for a long time. Now, I don't know the symbolism of some of the art, which could be anything from "look at me, ain't I cool" to "Zombie/vampires meet here every third Friday".

The thing I like about the top picture are the colors and the stylizing. In the second picture, I see a dragon's head on the black background. Then on the underneath area . . . well, it's crap. Obviously the person who tagged the bottom part needs to work on his/her artistic ability before attempting tagging again.

This winter the city had a crew paint over this art.

We had one nice day and fresh graffeti sprang up.

No clue about this one. There are a pair of them on these pillars.
and then there's this one.

Okay, so you really can't see this. The graffiti is green and black on the lower part of the bridge casement. It's hard to read from this distance, but I think it says "Booknook". If it doesn't, I still like that concept. Oh, and the reason I didn't get closer to that graffiti?

This little creek cuts a line next to the path, separating the two areas. It doesn't look deep, but that drop is about 8-10 feet. Sorry, y'all, but I'm not that dedicated.

Oh, look, it's a beauty berry bush!

I happened to take a picture on the few days out of 365 that these bushes actually look pretty. The rest of the time . . . well, I'll leave it for you to decide what it looks like.

I have a feeling that taggers believe they are the first to come up with the graffiti idea. Sorry, but the spray paint has been around for decades and graffiti has been around for CENTURIES, a millennium if you count cave paintings.

Or the Roman gladiators in Pompeii:

Or, my favorite, Viking graffiti carved into marble of the Hagia Sofia {Hagia Sophia (537 AD) is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey}.

Good old Halvdan. His name will live on for over 1500 years.  :-)
Graffiti has been around a long time. The key is to keep it hidden long enough from most people to cause it to become an archaeological 'find'. Or be artistic enough to actually make money tagging.

Just my thoughts for the day.

Later, Peeps!