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Good grief that's good graffiti

  
  

Page: 12(3)45

 
 
Stone Mirror
03:28 / 06.06.02
Not graffiti, but still much admired in the Silicon Valley area, is the following bit of signage:

  
 
Fra Dolcino
13:36 / 06.06.02
True as the day is long MC! Randy Dupre may remember it, he's from my neck of the woods.

FOAD Walsh. Make a good Fic suit that.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
14:07 / 07.06.02
On a bus-stop strangely close to a Maominstoat abode:

WE ARE ALL WOMBLES!

And just near Coptic St on the 55 bus route:

Make t-bar shoes, not war!
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
17:44 / 07.06.02
Oh, another one;

on the inside of the big Egyptian-style gates to Abney Park Cemetary in Stoke Newington is written, in a rather distressed hand, The Answer Is Not Out There!. Which always tickles me, even more than the Cthulhu-grave a couple of minutes away from it...

It could say "truth", though; recall...foggy...
 
 
Shortfatdyke
11:09 / 09.06.02
how about 'FREDDIE LAKER EUROBUS' painted - not sprayed, it must've taken hours - in huge letters all along one wall of my school, back in 1979/80. rather surreal, if you didn't know that it was a (bloody good) record by j j burnel.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
11:12 / 09.06.02
and one of the most classic examples, which i'm sure a lot of you will have seen pics of: on an ad for a car (early 1980s) which stated "if this car was a lady, it would have its bottom pinched". next to it was sprayed "if this lady was a car, she would run you down".
 
 
Shortfatdyke
11:48 / 09.06.02
threadhogging here, but the prodigy thing in the music section reminded me of when 'smack my bitch up' was released. me and another lesbian avenger graffittied two massive billboard posters. we sprayed out 'bitch' on one and sprayed in 'keith' (one of chumbawamba had written an article at the time called smack my keith up) and turned the prodigy sign into a feminist symbol. the other one we did the same thing and i thought it was too subtle so we added 'BITCHES HIT BACK!'. wish i'd taken some pics.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
17:50 / 09.06.02
About five doors down from my flat someone has scrawled, in big, wobbly capitals:

HELP I'M ILL

Makes me laugh or grimace in empathy, depending on my frame of mind...
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
18:02 / 09.06.02
Walking around the Covent Garden area the other day I saw the simple but profound Get Over it on a wall and do you know reader, I did.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
11:05 / 10.06.02
Coming out of Newcastle Central yesterday evening I was puzzled by this graffitto: GAY BEANS.

Is it a misspelling of Gay Bears? Is it the ultimate in genetic modification? Are these overly sensitive beans which come in several shades of lilac? Are they taunted in the beanfield by the straight beans (those nasty, macho mange-tout)? I think it's political correctness gone mad, myself.

Oh the wondrous nonsense perpetrated by the freewheeling brain on a boring, boring train journey...
 
 
Naked Flame
11:30 / 10.06.02
Near Banksy's 'Chequebook Vandalism' near the Tate:

this revolution for display purposes only
 
 
Margin Walker
10:41 / 13.06.02
It's not grafitti per se, but it has the potential to be a big meme. From graphic designer Geoff McFetridge:

"I'm Rocking On Your Dime"
 
 
betty woo
12:33 / 13.06.02
There's a bus floating around Toronto these days with the phrase Do not lick this bus scrawled on the side. Always makes me smile.

Spotted in Montreal: Time is not real, which we should have taken as a warning about what was to come that weekend.
 
 
ghadis
13:04 / 13.06.02
My 2 favourite Graffiti...

First one by Banksy again on the side of the Tate...

'There have been many Artists willing to die for their Art but why are there so few willing to learn how to draw'

And by the great Ivor Cutler who had the habit of going into supermarkets with a stack of stickers to place on all the food which simply said...

'MADE OF DUST'
 
 
Grey Area
13:10 / 13.06.02
Painted haphazardly on a doorway in Gent, Belgium:

"Meer Blauw in de Lucht,
Meer Dromen op Straat"

Translated, it means "more blue in the sky, more dreams on the street.". Something to wish for indeed...
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
22:04 / 13.06.02
There was some fantastic graffiti sprayed over the admin block of Liston College when I was attending it, years ago.

Basically, some guys had gotten pissed and tagged all over the school, putting a couple of choice expletives in. The headmaster's name was Frank D Huckle, or "fuckle" as schoolboy invention would have it. However, when it came to insulting him, the graffiti read, in three-foot letters:

FUCK YOU MR HUCKLE!

They mightn't have taught us much, but they taught us reprobates respect, egad!
 
 
rizla mission
13:27 / 14.06.02
And by the great Ivor Cutler who had the habit of going into supermarkets with a stack of stickers to place on all the food which simply said...

'MADE OF DUST'

I'm in tears, that's so brilliant .. god bless him..
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
01:16 / 16.06.02
Apparently Finsbury Park's classic "be your own leader you feeble burke" (of which I spoke earlier) was on Radio 5 Live today during a phone-in on people's favourite graffiti... and it wasn't me that phoned in.
 
 
Loomis
10:59 / 19.06.02
In the toilets at the student bar at Sydney university, there used to be written one of my favourites, at least there was before they tore the building down:

To do is to be - Socrates
To be is to do - Sartre
Do be do be do - Sinatra
 
 
The Natural Way
12:27 / 19.06.02
I 2nd Rizla's tears and add a: IVOR CUTLER MUST MARRY MY MUM!

This thread could and should go on forever.
 
 
Bill Posters
16:11 / 19.06.02
I was rather impressed by this pseudo-Nietzschean gem I saw at a station lately:

God Is Dead Sexy
 
 
Margin Walker
20:35 / 19.06.02
Some iridescent grafitti.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
23:56 / 19.06.02
Loomis! How can you put that over "Steve Lawliss Barks For Sex"?

He did, too - so the story goes...
 
 
Wrecks City-Zen
00:20 / 20.06.02
...all over Toronto, everywhere in the city... the eerie words " I Love You: in the same writing style in the same blue paint...
 
 
Jackie Susann
03:08 / 20.06.02
seen today: you're scum but you make me happy

extra points for getting "you're" right, unlike most graffitists.
 
 
Loomis
09:54 / 20.06.02
Speaking of graffiti spelling, near where I used to live there was written in big white letters: YOU ARE NOT YR. JOB. I mean, why the abbreviation? Does it really take that long to write "your"? Perhaps ze was unsure whether to write "your" or "you're" and found a clever solution.

Yeah, Rothkoid, I thought of Steve Lawliss, but the insight of that remark is only really apparent if you've met him...

I'm trying to remember some of the other classics from that bathroom. It should have been saved for a museum. Wasn't there one that went something along the lines of "D. Boon bowled a 300 game in this stall"? Genius! I knew he held the London-Sydney drinking record, but this is another thing entirely.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
10:53 / 20.06.02
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best graffiti I've seen is somewhere near Newtown, I think. Someone'd written

GOD HATES HOMOS!

across a wall. Underneath which was written:

But she really likes tabouleh!

Genius.

Actually, the most remarkable thing about the Manning Bar bathroom was the fact that someone once managed to shit on top of the cistern. Dear christ. While viewing the curious "My Bovver Craft Is Full Of Eels" reference, no doubt. You're also forgetting, Loomis, the simple truth of "If you drink lots of beer, your piss will turn clear" on the urinal.

Ah, University!
 
 
Margin Walker
05:28 / 07.07.02
Banksy's got a gallery opening in LA ("Existencilism"), complete w/ Money Mark performance
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
08:32 / 07.07.02
This one stencilled on every brick in a HUGE concrete wall in Exeter:

'This is just another brick in a wall'

Must have taken ages to do, as the ones at the top looked fresh, whilst the paint at the base was worn and faded. The stencil and typeface changed several times, as did the paint.
 
 
rizla mission
10:16 / 07.07.02
Scratched on the side of a Victorian police station in Swansea:

"READ CARL YUNG"

The spelling mistake just sort of makes it better.

Someone's also been writing "PLEASE HELP EACH OTHER" all over the place..
 
 
invisible_al
12:03 / 07.07.02
Just remembered a classic bit of tagging from my old school, first they sprayed a huge tag on the side of the gym. This got washed off pretty quickly, threats of vengence and death were made by the headmaster but no one ever owned up.
Then about a month later they came back as dug up the lawn in the centre of the school doing the same tag, we laughed but only in a quiet way so we weren't attacked by said rabid headmaster.
Still brings a smile to the face
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
16:30 / 09.07.02
New stuff seen in the constantly rearranged "front room" bit of the Foundry, East London:

Forget Satan: worship Sophie Ellis Bextor.

I just like the idea that she's a lot worse. Anyway, still better is this one:

I am pretentious.
 
 
Chuckling Duck
20:27 / 09.07.02
A few years ago in Chicago, someone glued big yellow thought bubbles above the heads of models on billboards across the city. They all said the same thing: “I KEEP GETTING MUGGED IN MY SLEEP.”
 
 
Bill Posters
16:39 / 10.07.02
At Greenwich Station in London we now have

Clitoris Allsorts

scrawled on a wall. Fantastic! Just the sort of thing I was expecting to be handed out by gaint penises on saturday, but wasn't. (Er, and sorry if this one is totally UK specific.)
 
 
Bill Posters
16:34 / 14.07.02
Oh and I once saw

Not Drowning But Raving

which I thought was very excellent too.
 
  

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