Comment by komali2
15 hours ago
No accounting for taste, but, graffiti is important whether it's aesthetically pleasing or not.
https://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/
Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city. It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment. A city only has value because it's occupied by many people, and those people need to express their autonomy and quite literally "leave their mark."
Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia. Just as I scrawled onto a bathroom stall in 2005 "Cameron takes it up the bum," so too did Salvius write of his friend on a wall in the House of the Citharist in the year 79, "Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this."
>It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment.
So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly? It's like saying that defecating on the street is a form of self-expression and "leaving their mark". Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?
>Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia.
There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
> So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly?
The idea that the city is owned by the uppermost caste of that society.
> There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.
Massive cathedrals to the rich would be erected and made holy, and individuals upon whose back society is build would demonstrate that though entrance is barred to them, they still can make the thing their own.
Nowadays there's plenty of such things in a city that closes its doors to many people that live in said city. San Francisco is a great example of this, where rising costs are pushing anyone not working in tech. Graffiti is an easy way to spit in the face of the rich that are trying to take a city away from you. Clearly, it has an outsized impact on their sensibilities.
I suspect most graffiti doesn't actually have this twisted motivation. It's just selfishness by thoughtless people wanting to advertise themselves, like dogs marking their territory. This intellectual rationalisation is more of a projection by resentful people with a poisonous worldview.
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This is just whitewashing crime.
The people being hurt by this aren't the millionaire or billionaire tech caste.
I'm reminded of when rioters were trashing stores in response to George Floyd's death. The usual justification was "oh business insurance will cover it, they need an outlet for their emotions" Well, the only grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood was out of commission for weeks due to damage. A black owned liquor store was burned down, and he didn't have insurance. Lots of similar stories on Lake Street. The people who deserved that harm the very least got it the most.
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To me personally, it sounds really bizarre. I cannot understand this way of thinking, but I guess it's just a matter of cultural differences.
You really think that the majority of taggers are thinking this deep? It’s mostly teenagers in high school that are mimicking others thinking “I’m so cool”. It fights nothing regardless. We can assign it value out of our asses all day and take some documentary as the truth, but if you think a kid writing a random scribble on the bart window or a bar bathroom, or a small business’s door deserves to take any of that back from the “caste” what are we talking about? The city is everyone’s, the tagger claiming a wall is as selective as what you claim the city is doing. Why do they think some random surface is more theirs than everyone else’s? I find tagging more selfish than what the city is doing.
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That explains why I see graffiti in all the rich neighborhoods and none in the poor neighborhoods </s>.
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Resisting the ideology that only people with money can alter the city environment.
When you see an impressive sculpture or skyscraper you know a lot of resources were spent, you know the rich people here are rich. When you see an area with lots of graffiti, there may be many good or bad things about it, but you know the citizens are free.
I would hope graffitiers have respect to only draw on the mundane parts of the city, not on cool sculptures. And in my experience, that is true. Also they should not obscure windows or information signs.
I think the cultural barrier preventing me from understanding this way of thinking is impenetrable to me. What a strange world, huh?
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>Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?
People not only tolerate, but I'd argue most people prefer it. I think, unlike Singapore or Tokyo, Americans, in cities, largely prefer a little lived in grime.
The Mission Bay is a relatively new neighborhood in San Francisco - mostly free of graffiti and is pretty much sterile, and most people would prefer to live in the Mission rather than Mission Bay. OpenAI likely pays a huge premium to HQ in the mission rather than settling in the more corporate offices of Mission Bay or even the Financial District.
I also noticed the same in Berlin - Kreuzberg, Neukolln, and other neighborhoods in East Berlin attract the most people, despite being drenched in graffiti.
If ever move to a city in America and tell people you live in the generally clean, spick and span, neighborhood in that city, half the people will look at you like you have 3 heads or simply assume you have no personality. Graffiti has largely become an accepted, or even valued, feature of a neighborhood. I believe internally it separates the "cool" city inhabitants from the "losers" out in the suburbs.
Edit: I just looked through all the images in the OP and one of them is a banksy. It's been there for over a decade. Graffiti isn't just tolerated, its practically protected.
What do you mean? OpenAI's main offices have been in Mission Bay since 2024
> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.
I think this is the heart of it, and where cities and suburban towns differ.
It's admittedly very hard to articulate in words. The walls of buildings in a city are part of the greater, broader, "face of the city." They are in a sense both part of a general "public space" yet also still privately owned. The walls of single family homes in suburban neighborhoods don't really compare. There's much more of a shared sense of "ours" in a city than there is out in the country, where everything's fenced off in little discrete boxes of land, each with someone's name on it. This greater sense of shared agency over the aesthetic of the broader "city" makes street art more justifiable there than it is in single family home places.
Oh I disagree completely. Precisely because city spaces are more shared, vandalism, including graffiti, is Mitch more destructive in cities.
It really undermines the sense of community when vandals deface public spaces and community centers and apartment blocks.
"It really undermines the sense of community when vandals deface public spaces and community centers and apartment blocks."
I much prefer graffiti in my field of vision than corporate billboards. In SF I don't even notice the graffiti, maybe because most of it is hard to read and understand? But I do notice the huge huge billboards over every thoroughfare with the stupid corny messages.
> It really undermines the sense of community
The people in these communities feel the opposite of you, especially since a lot of street art is murals capturing some local culture e.g. see Clarion Alley in San Francisco, a lot of very explicit messages of community.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AAWmH3aq51MWN1M88
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consider that it's a symptom of a community fragmented by the result of the profit motive rather than a cause of the fragmentation
If you're a cinema person, I strongly recommend Agnes Varda's documentary on LA street art at the end of the 1970s, Mur Murs. (That's a pun: murals as an expression of the murmurs of the community.) It takes graffiti as an expression of ownership as the central thesis and I found it really lovely. Thanks for this comment.
They should work as plate cleaners and civil park workers 100 hours a month. That will teach those entitled teens to leave their mark while autonomously cleaning those plates and planting flowers.
I suspect it's not the population's expression of ownership, but simply gangs marking their territory.
Sometimes tagging is that, sure, or just some person indicating that they exist there. For some taggers, it's an addiction. I knew one that would tag at people's houses when invited to parties. I was outside smoking a cigarette with him after the owner had threw him out on his ass, asking why he did shit like that, and he said "I just feel like if I can tag someone's house, it's like I've won."
I can kinda empathize since I'll have an addiction to getting the perfect photograph during a protest or whatever and will go to extreme lengths and burn through SD cards to get it.
In my experience the majority of graffiti is artists just putting up art. Privileged folk pass down the propaganda that graffiti is dirty and gangster and so any street art is viewed as dirty, but in the end it's just a matter of taste.
Art? There are some exceptions, indeed, where graffiti can be called art, but most of it is tasteless disgusting mess. It's borderline demonic in some cases. This especially applies to the list of pictures in the post. My theory is why ugliness is often considered beautiful is because ugliness invokes stronger and darker emotions.
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The most well known writers (this is their term, few if any graffiti writers I know refer to themselves as artists) are actually the ones who paint trains, not in metro areas. Yes, writers do paint all over metro areas, but that gets buffed out so quickly that the real holy grail is to get up on trains that go all over the country.
Train graffiti allows your art to roam and writers from other cities see it and recognize it. Your creativity proceeds you when you go to other cities to write and expand where you're known.
I live in a large metro and see very little if any gang graffiti. Also, most of the really good stuff? You never know its there because its under bridges, in aqua ducts and other areas few, if any people know about or venture to.
Why do you suspect that?
> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.
Is of course what art-students, pol-sci and social-sciences majors construct out of it because it fits their narratives. Never mind that the scratching of some roman soldier in a brothel's restroom has nothing to do at all with the NYC-born graffti culture. This top-to-bottom social astro-turfing would be just laughable grandstanding if it didn't result in real consequences for less affluent kids: crime, drugs, and deadly injuries as well as filing for bankrupcy at an age where Mrs. cultural-capital has acquired her prestigous arts degree.
I was thinking that too, it feels remarkably out of touch. People own the builds, homes, and businesses. If you're graffiting someone's business you're a tourist in the city, not an owner. Even from a philosophical perspective this makes no sense, because it claims the tourists hold ownership over someone else's city because they bought a can of spray paint while living in their parents basement