I really wish you wouldn't try to write graffiti when you're clearly not talented, especially when you're writing on the side of my apartment building. It looks like shit and we're going to have to remove it or face a fine from the city of San Francisco.
This tag is so poorly done, why did you even bother? Thanks for defacing the side of my house, jerk.
First of all, where's the respect? You must not know anything about hip-hop culture or the history of graffiti, otherwise you wouldn't be defacing someone's home. Graffiti started off as a form of artistic expression in the Bronx, where kids painted the sides of abandoned buildings and subway cars with their "wild style." It was truly a serious and beautiful kind of creativity that helped make neighborhoods friendlier and more colorful. Back then you didn't go and write some crappy little tag on someone's front door or car-- that would be asking to get your butt whooped. Graff kids would get permission from shop owners to paint their murals on the walls.
I have a lot of respect for graffiti when it's done well. I consider it a form of high art and am constantly amazed by what some people can do with a few cans of paint. What I have ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT for are the morons today running around with Sharpies and tagging up all the empty space they can find. You could argue that there is a time and a place for tagging, and it doesn't bother me in restaurant/bar bathrooms or on public phones or what-have-you, but when it starts spreading to the places where people live it pisses me off.
A few years ago, I spent a few months living in a working-class neighborhood of South Philly with my friend, Alexis. We lived next to a house that had a lot of kids living in it and always had parties. One night, while there was a party going on next door, we were awoken in our house by the sound of shattering glass. Someone had thrown a brick through our first-story window. We later found out why.
This idiot kid named Adil Kim (yeah, I'm using his full name so if you see him you can punch him in the face for me) wrote his shitty tag ("Mushy," which is how I knew it was him) all over the side of a van belonging to one of our neighbors. The neighbor saw the graffiti and thought someone at our house had done it. Even though we were out a front window for the night, I understood completely how the neighbor felt. My sister once had a party at my parents' house and some punkass kid she invited spray painted his shitty tag on our cellar door. God, I would have loved to SLAP THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of that stupid cracker. No one graffito-tags my childhood home and gets away with it!
Aside from the lack of respect, there's the other issue of the lack of artistic ingenuity. Real graff artists practice. They keep notebooks where they map out their designs and create new styles. There is a lot of thought involved when it comes to well-done graffiti. And it's sad to me that there aren't more real artists out there beautifying the derelict buildings of the slums of America-- I'd really like to see more of that. Instead we have these "wank artists" who think that they're hot shit when they're really just garbage. It's annoying because these crappy tags are making our cities uglier (because you have to deal with either leaving the shitty tag up, or painting over it creating a messy patchwork effect on your wall) while simultaneous giving the real graffiti artists a bad name.
So, for all you talentless and idealess scribblers out there who think you're hood, gangsta, and all that with a bag of chips, let me leave you with this: YOU'RE NOT, SO CUT IT THE FUCK OUT!
This post was featured on Hippest Snippets on November 3, 2010.
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