I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.
Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.
Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.
It's a shame.
For a small business owner, graffiti is an unconsented, recurring tax that provides zero ROI for the neighborhood. In SF if you own a business that gets tagged, you have X number of days to clean it up yourself otherwise YOU get fined.. the city does nothing to go after the criminals. They only go after law-abiding tax paying citizens cause that's where the money is.
The city does go after the people illegally tagging properties: https://sfstandard.com/2024/10/17/san-francisco-prolific-gra...
https://sfdistrictattorney.org/prolific-tagger-charged-with-...
https://sfist.com/2016/01/25/prolific_tagger_fined_over_200k...
Many more results if you search for “prolific tagger San Francisco”.
To be fair, not all graffiti on this site is non-consensual. For instance Jeremy Novy's koi fish. After living in Soma for time, everything else was a recurring pain mostly in terms of time I had to spend on it.
By definition graffiti is non consensual. If there is consent then it is a mural.
Regulating otherwise legal non-commercial speech on someone's own property is insane and sounds unconstitutional. If you want it there, or want it gone, that should be your own prerogative.
Your comment motivated me to read the way SF frames their regulation:
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...
> Graffiti. "Graffiti" means any inscription, word, figure, marking, or design that is affixed, applied, marked, etched, scratched, drawn, or painted on any building, structure, […examples…], without the consent of the owner of the property or the owner's authorized agent, and which is visible from the public right-of-way […variations…]
> It shall be unlawful for the owner of any real property within the City bearing graffiti to allow the graffiti to remain on the property in violation of this Article 23.
…surely they’ve thought of it already, but it does seem like that would make “yeah, but I said it was fine” a viable way out of that particular ticket, no?
I am sympathetic to the way they frame their motivations: it’s not the speech itself they say they’re regulating, it’s the way your neglect signals impunity, encourages more of it, and degrades the quality of your neighbors’ lives (and property). That and gang stuff.
Yeah that sounds basically impossible to prove since the onus is on them to prove the negative that you never consented to it, but my guess is since it's a civil ticket it goes through some kangaroo court where you are fucked from the get go and the judge is basically the 21st century equivalent of a red-coat.
No idea about SF, but a few years ago a group painted most of the Rolling security shutters in the business in a street near my home in Buenos Aires https://www.google.com/maps/place/Uruguay+224,+C1015ABF+ABF,...
Most were nice, and some of them still survive, but a lot seem to be over painted. (It would be nice to see a image at night or Sunday, when most business are closed. Some may be still there but rolled up while the business is open.)
Anyway, I don't expect a formal paperwork, just a handshake an an oral agreement.
I think you're overthinking it. I think overwhelming majority of people don't want that crap over their streets. It would be an easy 80+% issue for a politician to pick up so most places have laws that say don't have that ugly crap everywhere. Hence you see the value of neighborhoods with a lot of graffiti and considerably lower than those that don't
Is graffiti causing those neighborhood's value to drop or are businesses and individuals residing in cheaper neighborhoods less equipped to cover the ongoing maintenance costs of removing the ever-recurring graffiti?
There are literally dozens of local ordinances in SF that are blatantly unconstitutional. The issue is that nobody wants to actually pursue they to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, just for a court to eventually say “okay, you’re right.”
you should not get fined and it should not be a crime to graffiti
If somebody tagged your car, would you be upset about it?
I think it’s fair to say the blank wall of a store is different to someone’s personal car. I am not mad about people tagging commercial walls, and I would be if someone tagged my car. Thankfully no one ever does that because they share a common agreement on this.
Again it depends what it is. If someone tagged my bin out the front I wouldn’t care in the slightest. If they tagged a brick wall siding an alley or train line I wouldn’t care. If they jumped the fence, walked through the yard and tagged my window I would care.
just over a month ago I had my car broken into and nearly everything in the backseat was stolen. I was for sure upset but I never called the cops over it.
This site scrapes the city efforts to document who is doing "how much" damage/art.
Once they catch an artist in the act, they will use these archives to recommend a punishment.
But your point in valid - San Francisco likes graffiti.
Did he argue SF likes graffiti? I don't think he does, and the people living in the city certainly don't. These are criminals tagging buildings, and city officials who either don't care or are too busy with other things. I'm not aware of anyone who actually lives there who likes graffiti, and logically there's no reason anyone should. If someone wanted a mural they would have hired a real artist to do it.
He's arguing that the authorities aren't doing anything about it, and the reason is, (going out on a limb here) SF residents are sympathetic to the renegade artistic expression argument.
" Almost none of the cops live in SF. A lot of the people committing crime also don't live in SF "
any more
"It's a weird city." I think you're just seeing the transition US cities made in the 2000s from the location of the have-nots to the haves.
Hated this shit in NYC too. It's a fucking blight. Nothing but people spray painting their IG handles trying to become a clout goblin.
Ads everywhere. Can't even look down.
Yes, I'm old enough to remember CornBread's scribbles all over North Philly in the 70's. I think he started the modern scribble tag.
An authorized painting on a wall is called a mural
The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art
If a graffiti artist believed shitting on a lawn was art, they would, but they don't.
The problem and solution are similar to OSS:
The problem: the artists have something to say, they want as many people as possible to see it and use it.
The solution: make it free, and put it where as many people as possible can access it.
Yes, I just compared graffiti to github.
If there were community areas that were designed for painting, that would be totally fine by me. A big wall that is painted white, maybe with some ladders nearby if that doesn't violate health and safety rules, and tell people to go nuts. Though you would potentially get a lot of disagreeable content, but I suspect that they would quickly get overwritten anyway
There are many such walls or discreet hidden spots, like tunnels, where the graffiti artists paint for other artists. But painting in wide-open spots where the public can judge is just part of the culture.
Maybe I should have compared graffiti to the release of Gnutella.
> You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art.
Are you referring to 'tagging' (putting your, or your gang name on something)?
I agree.
Referring to well-crafted, or political (think banksy), images, i agree less. Unless i don't like the image/style then it's only lawn-worthy.
I don't agree with the political graffiti either. See imgur as where this leads. imgur used to be interesting images. Now it's 90% images of text as political statements. The site is effectively ruined.
I do mostly dislike tagging, but even if you paint Starry Night on someone else's wall, that's still vandalism
Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.
[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased
There are terms within the scene - tag, throwie, piece, burner - but they are not generally known by the wider public.
https://www.kmuw.org/beautiful-city/2014-08-04/what-were-tal...
English does, and definitely invented it before the rest of the world caught on to this culture. Try watching “Wild Style” from 1983, documenting some of the earliest beefs between the types of graffiti artists. Portuguese speakers did not invent this distinction.
Throw ups are the quick ones and Pieces are the long ones.
Graffiti is the catch-all, but "street art" vs "tagging" have pretty clearly distinct meaning.
Is "street art" not the name? Like how "comics" are low but "graphic novels" are respectable.
Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.
I submit Irish Graffiti I see here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Graifiti/
Though I think displaying these things as a map is more useful: https://streetartcities.com/cities/sanfrancisco
There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.
I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.
I'm probably the minority where I don't mind any graffiti, quality or not. As long as it isn't horribly offensive or impacting the functionality of something (over signs/glass/etc). Think I just prefer the look of a wall covered in even shitty tags and pasted posters over a completely blank slate.
I particularly love seeing peoples stickers about.
I agree. It feels like people are actually living there, in contrast to sterile, corporate glass/concrete.
As an aside, the Financial Times (yes, that one) did a great interview a couple of years ago with prolific London graff artist 10FOOT.
The comments were predictably howling with rage and injustice ("he's a criminal!!", says employee of cartel laundry HSBC), but I enjoyed it a lot.
https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-b7d9-4c16-b1c2-71def32cc...
He is indeed incredibly prolific, anyone taking a train around london will recognise 10FOOT.
But he is not an artist, he literally just tags 10Foot in what could be described as looking like it was done with a marker pen.
something like this is very typical: https://ldngraffiti.co.uk/graffiti/writers/flash?pic=152931&...
I enjoy good graffiti, but 10FOOT does not fall into that category.
Your link describes him as an author or writer, which is a kind of artist I guess. I'm not bothered about the nomenclature.
The articles describes him correctly as a writer, writer is the term graffiti artists refer to themselves and others as
I’m the early 2000s I worked as an assistant producer on a San Francisco graffiti documentary featuring several of these artists
Why did you leave San Francisco?
I didn't.
Lasercats that was briefly on the old theatre on Divisadero remains a favorite. This was like 15 years ago.
Old time graffiti writer here.
There's nothing so wild, anarchic and energetic than painting illegally on some surface without any permission.
Did you see the fish on pavement? Looks like it took great skill to get the shadows right. I've got goosebumps looking at them!: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/138...
It's unfortunate that the city threatens to fine the owner of the property: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/138...
Sure there is. You can go around beating random people op. Really gets your juices flowing!
I mean, since we’re apparently endorsing crime now.
Cool, but why lay out the images in such an annoying way? Whatever happened to simple, functional photo galleries? I miss them.
It works great on mobile. That's more than I can say for most things.
Turn your phone to landscape, does it sitll work for you? Or are you stuck viewing only the top half of the images and unable to scroll down.
Side scrolling in portrait is not my opinion of working great. It does work to view them at least. Youre trapped in a vertical scroll, no way to get back to the beginning but scroll all the way back.
on desktop i had to click on the small black area between two pictures before scrolling with left/right arrows became possible ... very bad UX
It's nice, and a lot of work, to gather this from the city. Many thanks!
But because it's just a stream, the only interaction is to browse, which can be mind-numbing.
It would be interesting to sort by image vector, to find tags from the same person, to locate them on a map, to mark and share favorites, etc.
Graffiti raises a host of social issues; features that concretize that could be helpful.
I wish there were more of this: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/696...
generally speaking- it is frowned upon by people in graffiti communities to tag peoples homes, cars, private property etc. This doesn't really cover "mom and pop" business'. Not justifying it per se, Although I am more on the favorable side of graffiti.
I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)
We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.
Well yeah, of course they do. Contrary to what what some in this thread are claiming, the modal graffiti isn't self expression or a yearning for freedom. It's tweaking people's noses by altering the property without permission. You can't do that on a designated spray area, so those people have to go into the neighborhoods to get their jollies by pissing people off.
I did a similar pet project about 12 years ago called Graffiti City. It was very simple map that displays pins where reported cases of destruction of property with paint, aka graffiti art, throughout the city of San Francisco. This uses public data available at data.sfgov.org.
As a suggestion,
* Orientation - some images are sideways,
* Option to walk through by date order, and by location ...
There is an audience for the time ordered flux of images on particular sites (at least in Australia).
Would have looked further, but scroll wheel finger cramped. Keyboard nav would be great.
Enabling the browser's scrollbar would also be good.
There was an article that came through here a little while ago describing the process by which commercial property owners and banks collude to keep storefronts boarded up and vacant because otherwise they’d have to adjust the loan terms or take a loss somewhere, but sure, go off about how the graffiti artists tagging the boarded up windows are the ones making the city ugly.
It’s all Banksy and “wall art” til you get an ugly stick figure drawing sprayed on your storefront/door. Also commercial property owners doing bad stuff and vandalism are not mutually exclusive bad things
A thought experiment I like is to image a city of the future. Imagine we get our shit together and survive another 1,000, heck, 100,000 years. Close your eyes and imagine our most advanced cities, 100,000 years in the future. What does it look like? Do you see graffiti in your vision? I definitely don't see it in mine.
I see machines/AI doing almost all the production and heavy lifting. Most urban streets have a brothel, a bar (not necessarily alcohol), a couple art/cultural clubs, something for repairing/dealing with transport. No one pays much mind to the physical view of the street because they're communicating/experiencing most of it through augmented reality of some manner.
> "Just because I'm smiling, doesn't mean I'm happy" -TrustyScribe
I love street art.
I wish I could say this evoked a nostalgic feeling, but having lived in SF, the literal memory that came to mind immediately seeing these is the repulsive smell of urine and the sight of dirty, trash-laden sidewalks. While graffiti itself could be viewed as artistic expression on its own, I liked looking at some of it, in my mind it seems so often correlated with decay
I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here. Some of these are crude or ugly (and I'm aware that this is subjective), but a few of these are really good and don't deserve a citation. Meanwhile this thread is SCANDALIZED that there is GRAFFITI (clutch your pearls!). It really goes to show the ongoing slide into total conformity that is the tech industry. I remember when tech had more of a nonconformist, countercultural bent, but it has been dying for quite a few years.
I'm surprised and also not. We're a long ways away from 90s hacker culture, and even then there were plenty of upper class kids that were just in it for good pay working for the giant tech corps. We like to romanticize everyone dropping acid and being part of the counter culture, myself included, but reality is different.
The saddest part to me is that the aesthetic of street art has been totally consumed by major corporations and spit back out on to the streets here in Brooklyn. I laugh to myself whenever I walk by a tourist taking a selfie in front of some mural that is really just some brand advertisement.
I don't know anyone in tech who enjoyed watching gangs mark their territory with tags in their neighborhood.
Sometime in the last 30 years I realized the "gang territory marking" thing is mostly made up and basically not to take anyone seriously when they say this.
I lived it when I lived in West Oakland. Tagging, violence, hell a neighbor was shot in the face in front of her family over a gang beef. I'm still exposed to it now working with people reentering society after being incarcerated.
You haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years, perhaps because you only circulate with people just like you in insulated echo chambers. I can tell you from having lived it: tags are not funsies and diversity and inclusion. They are male-cat-pissmarks-on-the-wall from gang members establishing, defending, and expanding turf, and they are unwelcome for very good reason.
Gang enhancements are mostly a falsehood that cops and prosecutors use to get heavier prison sentences for racial minorities and to justify their budgets.
Also, you seem to have mixed up prison gangs with street gangs in this latest comment. The former are pretty different from the latter. You also have mixed up the general concepts of crime and violence with somehow proving a gang.
The idea that gangs are fighting for turf is very outdated. Even 30 years ago it was exaggerated. But today, after 30 years of falling crime rates, it's especially ridiculous.
>I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here.
I'm not. HN trends toward the most suburban conformist mindset possible.
Tagging is both crude and ugly, and this is not a subjective opinion.
Some of these are great.
I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.
If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)
Great to see some of my friends work up here. It's nice to be reminded of why I love this city so much.
Scraping these from the city violations DB was a cool idea.
Just drive north on 19th Ave, between, say, Brotherhood Way and Sloat, and look at the fencing on your right. Keeps getting filled with grafitti.
I like that the pictures are taken by government employees instead of the graffiti writers themselves nor by fans of graffiti.
Because of that the pictured artworks look much less nice, and the images can capture what 99% of the artworks actually provide to their surroundings: dismay, disregard, and a constant reminder that urban anonymity is a moloch that you can enjoy watching from a coffee shop’s window, while it pisses in a baby stroller.
I scrolled pretty far and didnt see Borf in there. Was that Web 2.0 ?
Beautiful and disgusting at the same time.
It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.
For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
If they're not covering windows, signs or art, what is being vandalized? A blank slab of concrete performs its function equally well no matter the color.
A 'blank slab of concrete' isn't just a structural element; it’s a signal of stewardship. When you ignore tagging on that slab, you create a permission structure for more intrusive vandalism. It’s the 'Broken Windows' theory in practice: tagging leads to broken glass, which leads to copper theft, because the physical environment signals that the space is unmonitored and ownership is absent.
High-trust societies rely on the shared maintenance of the commons. If the community can't even agree to keep a wall clean, it’s a leading indicator that the city has lost the ability to enforce the social contract on larger issues.
Sadly this is partly why SF will never be a high-trust society.
The broken windows theory says that broken windows leads to more broken windows. Is there evidence that graffiti leads to broken windows outside of a context where it implies a building is abandoned?
Most graffiti is just tagging, scribbling their name on something. I do not consider this art. It makes the environment you live in lease appealing (looks more ghetto).
Bro a lot of these aren’t beautiful quotes. Gang signs, immature shit from kids who do most of this stuff. Some is beautiful art most someone just signed their name.
At what age would you suggest whipping or lashing kids?
Would you personally be prepared to do it? Or, the owners of the property
Should it be public lashings, or pay-per-view, or witnessed only by a select group of people, you place your trust in?
If it's a caught female, can men whip her?
How would you phrase the job application?
I see a few flaws in your idea. Does Singapore still not allow males with long hair?
In Asia it’s done as young as 5. Maybe that’s why they’re ahead.
> If it's a caught female, can men whip her?
Yes. Men and women are equal. Your question implies you are sexism. Do you believe women are superior to men?
> How would you phrase the job application?
Whatever term they use in Singapore.
> I see a few flaws in your idea. Does Singapore still not allow males with long hair?
There’s tradeoffs for either idea. San Francisco is covered with human shit while Singapore isn’t and you can get whipped for shitting in the streets.
Remarkably in both systems not very many people get whipped. Nearly zero. Because the possible consequence is what enforces the rule, not the actual consequence itself. As long as people know they will be whipped, they then act in ways that will prevent the whipping from happening. In the beginning a few people will be whipped but that number will drop dramatically very shortly.
You didn't answer the question.
The failure is in your own comment.
This collection is a bit ordinary and unremarkable. There are many great large format, new/used print books on street art
That is arguably the point. They are taken from the SF city website and are placed in arbitrary order. I personally love this unfiltered take.
There's more to get from these than just aesthetics, precisely because they're not curated.
no "fuck /u/spez". I'm disappoint.
the sheer lack of knowledge of the graff scene on HN isn't surprising in any way but wow there are so many idiotic hot takes in this thread hahaha. I've been writing graff for over 20 years - it's something the average civilian mind could never comprehend. Graffiti has existed almost since the beginning of civilization; it's primal, it's raw. Doing graff is one of the most human activities one could partake in. It's also one of the most pure art forms to be conceived. All of that is true and most graff writers are horribly toxic and terrible humans (most but certainly not all).
> city inspectors documenting graffiti violations
Because grey fucking concrete walls are so much better than colorful entertainment.
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If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal.
It's ok
It is illegal. It gives the population the idea they have the right to alter their environment, and that's dangerous.
Alter other people's property.
Agreed, that is a dangerous concept
*in ways that don't harm that person
What is the harm?
Yes, and if I don't like that someone left a fridge outside on the kerb for $20, I have to pay someone to remove the fridge. That doesn't mean my rights were infringed upon.
> You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. > You just want them to stop spraypainting shit.
https://i.imgur.com/qaFgSm7.png
You have it backwards. It's the act of NOT fining them, NOT calling their parents, of ignoring small destructive acts that ruins lives.
Almost everyone doing a 10 year sentence for a serious crime started out by getting away with a lot of small ones.
I agree with everything you said but I don't understand the imgur reference
That you "want to have your cake and eat it too," is what they're saying.
Yon dog does too.
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 think you may have agreed with them a long time ago, when you chose your username. Have you perhaps become wealthier, in the interim?
Commentary is graffiti. We're all selfish dogs marking our territory, advertising that we exist.
Do you believe you're giving graffiti artists even a thimbleful of good faith by comparing them to dogs?
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.
I really don't understand the connection between street art and the George Floyd protests. I understand that you generally don't like the idea of people operating outside of the State-mandated heteronormative way, in which case I say, the best way to prevent a riot is not have cops murder people.
We whitewash crime every day here, for example theft of labor value. It's not a crime in the USA but it is a crime insomuch as it's unethical.
> You really think that the majority of taggers are thinking this deep?
Nope, not something I thought up at all, this is what I discovered after talking to a lot of taggers and street artists as a result of my photography obsession leading me into the skater scene. I used to think tagging was just gangs marking territory (in reality only a small portion of it is).
What I have noticed is that a certain class of people have formed an immutable idea of taggers, skaters, and street artists, and that idea includes that for whatever reason all these sorts of folks are stupid. I've found that to be not the case at all.
You don't see graffiti in rich neighborhoods either because you're describing the suburbs where nobody really lives (as a measurement of people per square kilometer) or because rich neighborhoods get immediate attention by cleaners (or the rich hire private cleaners).
There's plenty of graffiti in Manhattan, have you looked up how much it costs to rent there lately?
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 that's very exciting for you, because imo it's very rarely we encounter truly challenging problems like this.
I understand that you prefer to make up your mind about street artists, but I can assure you as someone that used to hold the same opinion, that opinion is held from a place of unfamiliarity with the culture and the people in it. It was very enlightening for me to step out of my SF tech circle into the street art scene and talk to very, very different people. You may be different but I personally find it very important to challenge my thinking by talking to very different kinds of people.
Are you American? Freedom means the ability to do what you want. It doesn't mean owning guns.
>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.
Graffiti is by definition uninvited and unwanted (esp. in SF city ordinance)
consider that it's a symptom of a community fragmented by the result of the profit motive rather than a cause of the fragmentation
It's already usually illegal to do graffiti, sometimes that's the whole point.
(4) Afford young people more options and opportunities to do meaningful things.
I think I used to believe something like this. But I spent two decades living in this context and changed my mind.
There can be beautiful and effective expressions of culture and resistance that don’t tear down the commons people are trying to build together. And it’s hard to ask people to take care of the commons when other people aren’t. Instead we cede management of shared space to private enterprise (malls and gyms and retail as entertainment because your parks are torn up).
Agree with all.
> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.
My understanding has been (some fraction of) taggers are disaffected. So I could buy that some are reasserting ownership.
Some are just dumb teenagers acting out (shitposting), like my son did.
A handful are pretty good artists. Like some of the kids in my kid's extended social group. Worthy of resources and media. eg Commissions for murals.
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.
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.
Eh, that kinda sucks. If you learn to read it, it can be a bit cool to see who's where. But I would say the majority of graffiti in my city is at minimum a little doodle, and often full blown murals. If that's not the case where you live that is indeed a bit ofa bummer.
> It's borderline demonic
Demons aren't real so I don't understand what this means.
> tasteless disgusting mess
Do you disagree that taste is subjective, then? It seems what's happening here is that you're very, very confident that you are an authority on what's beautiful, despite several people telling you they find beauty in what you abhor.
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.
"art"
Why do you suspect that?
> It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment
no, just a way for a minority to trash public infrastructure because they're assholes
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.
> 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
> 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
We were discussing graffiti.
You seem to know a lot better than less affluent people what's good for them. When you talk to such people, what do they tell you about crime, drugs, deadly injury, and filing for bankruptcy? When you've talked to graffiti artists, what led you to believe they were doing it so as to cause crime, drugs, deadly injury, and bankruptcy?
Tons of people unfortunately see this as ok. My response to them is always "let me tag your car, your house, your laptop" and if you complain you're a hypocrite
I like "Street Art" where permission has been given. I don't like tagging and property destruction. Maybe when I get a little older I'll find some graffiti exhibit at a museum and go tag it.
I really enjoy graffiti murals, and I go out of my way to photograph them in my own city and when I travel. I will see them when I driving or walking around and stop to look for a moment and try to understand the perspective and message of the artist and take a picture if I can.
That said, I don't much like tagging, tagging is generally not art in my opinion even if you can say artist styles are used within it. Tagging is all about ego and selfishness, it's there purely for the sake of saying "I was here", as if you are the most important person in the city that you should claim to put your name on that wall.
I've met quite a few graffiti artists all over the world in my travels, and the people who tag and the people who paint murals are by and large /not/ the same people. The folks who paint murals are trying to say something, the folks who tag have nothing more to say than to try to create a monument of some kind to themselves. I don't respect taggers, I do respect muralists.
I consider corporal punishment inherently barbaric. An appropriate fine or short stay in jail ought not be life-ruining.
Also, I think there are other effective approaches in some circumstances. People (including "the kids"), locally (Toronto) and other places I've heard of, have been paid (not a super common thing, but it happens) to do actual artwork. There's a mural I consider quite well done, not too far from my place, that isn't getting defaced even though it's in a place where I would otherwise ordinarily expect strong temptation to "tagging" and other graffiti.
I've heard real estate people call this legalized extortion, since you have to select a graffiti artist with enough reputation that others don't mess with the piece.
>real estate people call this legalized extortion
I hope they know what some say of the real estate agent.
I’ve heard such reputations involve not only the caliber of the art, but also the retributive consequences the artist and friends are thought to impose on people who deface their work…
I think there is a lot of nuance here. Just as councils and developers can construct ugly buildings artists can also add ugly work to walls.
I agree there is a spectrum. On one hand you've Banksy or Basquiat adding to a flat grey wall and creating art that has a political voice or some artistic merit and the other you've some twat scribbling hate symbols on a historic monument. I don't have on ideas on how we can ensure one and not the other though.
It sounds like you're saying the only thing ugly about tagging is when it contains objectionable political content. That's not really responding to the complaint here, which is that the vast majority of it is low effort, low quality tagging that makes things aesthetically uglier. It's easy to go out with a collector's eye, cherry-pick the good stuff, and put together a slideshow that makes it look like a public amenity, but that ignores the overall effect of wall after building after block of proof of Sturgeon's Law.
Is it ignorable? Does all the terrible stuff just disappear into the background, or should we care about how it affects the experiences of people who have to live with it and walk past it every day? I think that's the question people are arguing.
> You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop.
Oh yes, you want to (with an asterisk). As a former Graffiti writer myself I can speak from experience that the judge will be the first person in those kids life taking their actions seriously, giving them any sort of guidance.
Better spend a couple of hours per month doing social work than letting them slip further away until no softer juvenile criminal code is there to protect them.
One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?
Also culture. There’s just no culture of it.
It’s explained by punishment.
Also probably a lot of surveillance. Not just cameras, but by people in the community.
People underestimate the tattle-tale culture in China.
If you execute everyone who commits a misdemeanor, crime rates are extremely low.
If you simply eliminate all criminal laws, the crime rate goes down as much as is possible, immediately.
Yeah, a city with a population of zero has zero crime.
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To include the obvious in this discussion, it's your opinion that street art / graffiti makes things ugly; others feel differently. I think it brings places alive, brings human expression into the otherwise highly controlled environment. There's a spirit to it, and I love to see kids who have no voice take the step of speaking up. I love to see it, generally. To me it's a sign of freedom and very democratic.
As for it's quality as art, I don't buy that's a purely subjective, arbitrary opinion (meaning, I think it's reasonable to use some judgment). But people still differ greatly: look at their responses to abstract expressionism, for example; some people think it's trash, others pay tens of millions.
There is plenty of ugly in cities: There is a lot of ugly architecture; buildings are much more visually prominent and for aesthetics I would remove the ugly ones much sooner than removing the street art. There is ugly advertising and marketing; there are ugly industrial sites on beautiful waterfronts and in neighborhoods.
Should those be subject to the same judgement as some kids expressing themselves? The people who make the buildings, ads, sites have far more power and resources, including enough to make those beautiful. They seem much more responsible for the results than the kids, who may have nothing else.
Please post your address. I'd like to help make your home "feel alive."
I think mostly here in switzerland, it’s tolerated in certain areas, and even directly sponsored, in Lausanne, nearly every pedestrian underpass is completely covered in pretty good work, every bit of street furniture has unique designs that seem to be left alone by taggers, areas that might otherwise be run down are covered in colourful murals that are regularly refreshed, i think this is the right approach.
My theory is that graffiti is tied to the feeling of lack of agency in one's life. Everyone wants to "make their mark on the world". Some of us get to do that with an interesting career, building a family, getting involved in the community. If you feel excluded from all that, like those things are beyond your reach, you might resort to things like graffiti. IMO it's something that says "I exist, and I can change things around me" for those who don't have a better way to do that.
Based on that we "fix" the problem by making sure that everyone has a chance to make a fulfilling life for themselves. Better & freer education; Healthcare; cost of living & wage support. Etc.
That's what therapy is for, not spray paint.
Ah yes, just what everyone scaping by paycheck to paycheck with no housing security is thinking: "I should go to therapy"
Why, once they do that they'll be pulling themselves up by their boostaps in no time!
If you want to dissuade illegal graffiti, give people legal walls.
As if there's no creative avenues available for people to express themselves other than spray painting people's property ..
Are there places people can legally grafitti there? In a number of small towns there are unofficial grafitti rocks or walls in public view that redirects a lot of peoples mischief and desire to display public art. Nobody is in any actual trouble if they are caught painting it although you will lose your paint.
It might not be a total solution, but it could have a significant impact on grafitti other places.
There's Clarion Alley in the heart of the Mission, which I think is open to graffiti, as everything is plastered with it, most of it looking really nice. You can see it on Street View.
I understand what you're saying but harsh punishment doesn't really work, they just increase the stakes of the crime and lead to more desperate behavior to avoid getting caught rather than less occurrence of the crime itself. Pretty much the only effective form of crime deterrent is economic development, i.e. give people something else to do.
You jail 100 and the thousands stop doing it.
an invader mosiac is not graffiti, it's street art, which is more or less the mortal enemy of graff. I'm not even trolling when I say people with attitudes like yours are what legit motivate so many graff writers out there.
I like graffiti - even random tags over blank walls because it’s a sign people are truly living and breathing in a space.
As long as there have been walls there has been graffiti. Spaces without graffiti are artificial and antiseptic.
Graffiti on things like trees (e.g. in urban parks) is awful and trees are the opposite of artificial and antiseptic. The main problem with graffiti is that most of it is made without thought or consideration, and that never ends well.
Yes, I think they should avoid covering other works of art, nature, information signs, and windows. But blank space should be fair game.
most modern buildings are an ugly demoralising reminder of the existence of thoughtless people who have no consideration for others and are happy to degrade the shared public space for a few seconds of selfish enjoyment (or in this case, millions of dollars at the public's expense).
I wish you'd stop being coy and just tell us how you really feel.
I like that part of it too - but feel that if I owned a building and had people spraying paint all over its exterior whenever they felt like it...maybe not so much.
Tell me your address so I can come tag your car or your windows or your laptop
Graffiti is property destruction, pure and simple. I'm happy to come destroy your property. Complain and you're a hypocrite
There are tags all over my building, it’s lovely. Please come add more
Why windows and not their homes walls? People rarely tag windows in my experience, or cars.
You don't get to choose what others value. I value my walls being clean. You value your windows and car. If it's not ok for your car and windows to be tagged then it's not okay for others to tag my walls.
Oh, i just saw the 20 lashes thing, rather have graffiti than fascists
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