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Good grief that's good graffiti

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05:27 / 06.02.02

For over a week now, as I take the bus to school, I have noticed this graffiti scrawled quite legibly on the gray wall of a concrete sound barrier in plain black letters:

Your child is the canary in the goldmine

This appears right on a busy road next to the train station where people park their cars to take the train into the city to go to work. In other words, it has pretty high exposure.

I like it. Makes ya' think. Any other good grief graffiti sightings in anyone's lives recently.

m5

05:35 / 06.02.02

that is excellent. graffiti can be such a powerful method of expression.

the strangest piece i ever saw was on a boarded up amusement arcade, in scotland (i cannot remember exactly where), where someone had spray painted in big, orange letters Quite Good!

05:43 / 06.02.02

That's really funny! Ah, I love absurdity.

10:41 / 06.02.02

I love graffiti. These are all UK:

Nosebleed (Bristol, circa 1995)

Far Away And Close At Hand In Images Of Elsewhere (along the rail track as you pull into Paddington from the South West)

Make Buns Not War

Eat My Glitter (both central London)

Prolly the saddest one I ever saw was (and for all I know still is) on a bridge over a road in Nottinghamshire; it's

Come Back Liz I Love You

12:23 / 06.02.02

The last couple of times I've driven (well, been driven) back through South Wales I've been cheered up slightly by a very big "NO MORE WAR" scrwaled on the side of an otherwise fucking depressing, rain soaked motorway underpass. Simple, but nice.

Also, some fictional graffiti - in the film 'O Lucky Man', Malcolm McDowell repeatedly walks past a wall with "REVOLUTION IS THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUALS" written on it. Which sounds like the sort of thing those situationist types liked to write on walls..

13:54 / 06.02.02

"No One Is Innocent" daubed on a barrier on the route of the 27 bus between paddington and camden.

or the old classic on the condom vending machine: "Insert baby for refund"

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

13:58 / 06.02.02

"No one is innocent" is also written on a door on Brick Lane.

Which always makes me think "technically speaking true, artschool Tarquin, but the people hit by a nailbomb quite near this very spot might be said to be more innocent than some"....

14:02 / 06.02.02

Reni Lives. Chorlton Manchester, went up after he left The Stone Roses.

Unbeatable.

[ 06-02-2002: Message edited by: Sauron ]

The Planet of Sound

14:36 / 06.02.02

Talking of Tarquinism, what about the 'Chequebook Vandalism' stencil stuff that's appearing all over London?

14:48 / 06.02.02

innocenter than thouism?

14:54 / 06.02.02

or "King Kong Died For Our Sins"
or "Sausage Rolls OK"
or "Work Buy Consume Die"

all from graffiti by compiled by nigel rees

or "jesus can you tell i'm avoiding this vital piece of work that needs to be done by tomorrow"

[ 14-03-2002: Message edited by: little brained brain surgeon ]

14:56 / 06.02.02

I might have done this one already, but...

There were two bits of really simple graffiti round our way that didn't say anything remarkable but became special by surviving for EVER, and ended up inspiring the sort of respect you would normally reserve for a retired old soldier who still wears his regimental beret (he doesn't like to talk about what he's been through, the beret says all he wants to say).

PAUL MARSH SMELLS
Lived all by itself right in the middle of a great big empty concrete slab that was part of the Tricorn shopping centre (Portsmouth), right by the busiest road in town. Everyone in town must have read it a thousand times. Eventually painted over in a half-arsed attempt to make a massive brutalist pile look appealing.

SEX IS FUN
Written in small spindly letters on a high, rendered garden wall. Me and my then girlfriend walked past this many times on a regular route, and exchanged smiles every time. Well, maybe not, but we did feel a sort of affection for it. A nice little shared experience thingy. Something that is obvious, sure, but worth remembering now and then. "Yes, sex is fun." It was a reassuring presence, a friendly old lady giving you a cheery hello from her garden gate. We were gutted when we turned the corner one day and found it had been painted over. Bah! It's all tags now.

[ 06-02-2002: Message edited by: Saveloy ]

17:27 / 06.02.02

"ZEKE EATS BANANAS."

in letters about fifteen feet tall.

18:13 / 06.02.02

The last I remember seeing was..

"Kill your Addictions, Start with Television"

pointless and uncalled for

18:20 / 06.02.02

In the local arts/socially disatisfied area.

IF VOTING CHANGED ANYTHING THEY"D MAKE IT ILLEGAL

On the side of a KFC for about a week.

THAT WASN'T CHICKEN

18:50 / 06.02.02

My favourite political graffiti in Belfast (although somewhat out-of-date)

Free Deirdre Rashid and All Loyalist Prisoners

I like the fact that Deirdre gets top billing, even in Loyalist East Belfast.
And who could deny that she deserves such esteemed company, seeing as her own career has largely been a campaign of terror since the late 1960’s.

Still, I did find her on-screen romance with Johnny Adair, a bit unbelievable....

19:24 / 06.02.02

8 inch high blue letters all over downtown toronto last year : "I LOVE YOU"

everyone needs to be told that, now and then.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

09:46 / 07.02.02

As a young 'un I was always amused by the huge 'FREE NICKY KELLY' followed by a tiny '...with every packet of cornflakes' that graced a wall near my school.

[ 07-02-2002: Message edited by: Vote for Iron Man Wang ]

Kitten Caboodle

09:46 / 07.02.02

Some bugger who'd been reading too much American Psycho decided to stencil This Is Not An Exit all over town a few years ago. Mainly on exits.

09:46 / 07.02.02

On the back wall of Keble College, Oxford:

REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAURS

- accompanied by three large outline drawings of dinosaurs. This has been there for *years* - I think the college authorities must regard it with affection.

On the pavement outside the Said business school, again in Oxford:

JESUS WAS A TORY

Ooooh... the Tricorn centre. Anyone fancy a topic on beastly buildings?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

09:46 / 07.02.02

Don't you be dissing my Tricorn building.

09:46 / 07.02.02

Come off it - have you seen the thing?

(Or is this a reference I have failed to get?)

Kitten Caboodle

09:46 / 07.02.02

Mummy what's a tricorn centre?

09:46 / 07.02.02

THIS is the Tricorn Centre

As you will see, it rules.

(Sorry for thread rot, btw. Would this be worth its own thread?)

pointless and uncalled for

10:54 / 07.02.02

Downtown Toronto, Queen Street West. There is a dead tree that has been pollarded. On one side of the remaining trunk is an odd face, on the other side the words "Hug Me".

I find that poetically amusing.

16:08 / 07.02.02

Well comming back from High Wycombe along the A40 theres 'Why do you do this every day?' in huge letters on a fence next to the motorway. Made me think when I was doing a 4 hour commute every day.

Then of course I knew a bloke in Sunderland who stenciled hundreds of small blue tripods all over the town as an art project, you can still see a few round town even now :-)

Oh yeah and just off fleet street I saw '1949 returning' in fading letters.

Btw the stencil stuff in London might be done by Banksy (http://www.banksy.co.uk/). He might come across as a bit of art-trendy wank but I read a
little black book he put out a few months ago for £4 and he definately has his heart in the right place. The pictures are piss funny as well.

[ 07-02-2002: Message edited by: invisible_al ]

pointless and uncalled for

16:15 / 07.02.02

That's some cool stuff.

Some people who wandered around Soho, London might remember the Hienz Phat Gloss pieces that were stenciled around, amongst many things. I loved them.

I think that there was a computer firm (may have been Linux) that got clocked for stencilgraphing street corners in San Francisco but I can't remember clearly.

wembley can change in 28 days

16:21 / 07.02.02

Not very profound or clever, but in my two summers of treeplanting, sometimes the only thing that could make us all feel better was the graffiti at the front of the bus; someone had magic markered My Cat's Breath Smells Like Cat Food.

Still makes me smile.

18:48 / 07.02.02

"I still live here, I will kill you"
Found in a very scary abandoned psychiatric hospital. Scrawled in ballpoint pen in huge block letters that would have taken hours to make. It really help set the mood.

"Shame on you, Detroit, for letting this beautiful old building go to rack and ruin!"
It was edited by later visitors to say "old white," before Detroit and "*(only white males have owned this building - not black people!)". It was a rather strange thing to see in the building, which is now abandoned and falling to pieces. The building, by the way, was Michigan Central Station.

I have seen a lot of interesting graffiti in various offlimits areas, but people seem to be a lot less creative topside -- in my area anyways. As for the graffiti that I do find, it always seems to mean more if you have been inside the building or drain where it's written. I guess it is just something you have to be there for.

uncle retrospective

04:46 / 08.02.02

On a motorway crossover.

M. Cann is bent

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

05:14 / 08.02.02

Yeah, the "Chequebook Vandalism" thing IS Banksy- it's on a bridge near where I work & it's signed.

I KNOW I've mentioned this one before, but on a wall in Dalston (ie quite a fucking long way from Queen's Park) it reads simply
QUEEN'S PARK LIBRARY.
This sort of thing gives me hope for the future.

07:26 / 08.02.02

Yarr, some of Banksy's work is really cool. Chequebook vandalism was *real* nice and I also liked, "Why is it that none of the people who need an inferiority complex have an inferiority complex?" Thanx for the link!

I wonder, does grief graffiti, such as invisible_al's daily sightings of "Why do you do this every day?" or "Your child is the canary..." only serve to remind people of their suffering, or do you think it might help inspire them to change or at least be more conscious of their situation?

m5

[ 08-02-2002: Message edited by: modfive ]

11:46 / 08.02.02

Don't see why graffiti can't be potentially consciousness-raising meeself. Some more:

Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them.

Use Your Cross Wisely, Crucify A Politician

The so-called London Clique (

) s'times meet in The Foundary wot encourages graffiti. Some I've seen include:

Up To My Knees In Blood and Spunk Again

(No comment!)

Why be A Cog In The Machine When You Can Be A Spanner In the Works?

and

Shooting Nuns With Automatic Guns

(This last I find crass and offensive; I can't imagine who would be tasteless enough to write it and can only hope it's no one we know...

)

Oh and once in a dive in New Cross I saw:

Smash The System by the bog tank; someone had altered it to:

Smash the Cistern

Ah, postmodern irony, the only god we have left.

19:50 / 14.03.02

whoops

[ 14-03-2002: Message edited by: little brained brain surgeon ]

20:41 / 14.03.02

I saw some graffiti under a bridge once that read "No one can tell who you've got to be". It struck my 16-year old brain quite profoundly and I wrote a song about it.

Zoom.

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