That’s great!
My hometown of 75,000 is in a basin about 400 feet deep. One summer, someone went through the effort to spell out “SEX” on the basin wall using dozens of large rocks that had been brightly painted orange. The text was huge and could be seen for miles.
I was amazed it lasted so long (maybe a year or two), being so visible, but access to the site was treacherous and it seemed nobody wanted to put in the effort to remove the rocks.
Great thread!
I like the one in Oakland which says, incomprehensibly enough, “EMO MILITIA.”
Shortly after 9/11:
“Dear God, save us from the people who believe in you.”
Old one:
“My mother made me a homosexual.”
Written below it was:
“If I sent her some wool, would she make me one?”
When I was a kid I used to go to Dimond Park in Oakland a lot. There was a creek trail that led up a ways into the hills, before stopping at the base of a cliff on top of which was a driving range. Leimert Blvd. passes over the creek by bridge, which is a long way up from the creek and trail, maybe 50 or 60 feet. Someone spraypainted “How did I do this?” in the middle of the center arch underneath the bridge. There is no obvious way to reach this spot. My best guesses are a team of guys with climbing gear of some kind, or maybe a very long pole with a spraypaint can rigged up on the end. A friend I met later claimed he did it, but I don’t think I believe him.
That’s just brilliant!
I was always fond of that old bathroom stall rhyme:
Here I sit
half broken-hearted
came to shit
but only farted
This is from way back…
At a transit (bus) station in Edmonton, infront of the AGT Tower, there was, scrawled on the wall, in the midst of obscene and scatological offerings was the following"
“VISIT THE SCENIC OZONE!”
For some reason I loved that one…
regards
FML
My favorite is from the early days of NASA when Werner Von Braun had come over from the German rocket team. NASA’s motto was “We Aim For The Stars.” Someone had scrawled underneath “But Sometimes We Hit London!”
Tolkien apparently had a running story going with his children where career criminal Bill Stickers was relentlessly pursued by the honorable (but slightly dim) Major Road (As in this picture)…
Grim
There’s the old favourite, scribbled beneath notes not to use the lift (elevator) in a fire, “use an extinguisher!”.
In Belfast someone eschewed the usual offensive paramilitary murals to paint a tribute to the late John Peel, who promoted the song Teenage Kicks, by Northern Irish group The Undertones.
Seen on an overpass:
I LOVE YOU SWEATHEART!
In my home town, on train trestles:
SIZZLE LIPS LOVES CHEWIE
and
VIRGIL IS THE FROG BOY
The Virgil one stayed up for years and years; it was done by some high school boys in the 70’s. After a while it disappeared, but then they had a class reunion and a new tag appeared:
VIRGIL IS STILL THE FROG BOY
My dad reported seeing that one in an old pay toilet (remember those?), as:
Here I sit
all broken-hearted
paid to shit
but only farted
Another of his favorites, from a bathroom stall covered with jokester grafitti:
One would think from the flow of wit
That Shakespeare’s ghost comes here to shit
My dad also told me that there used to be a spot on Lookout Mountain which featured an outhouse perched on girders extended out over over a very high bluff. On the inside of the door, some wit had scrawled:
SIT LIGHT!
I haven’t seen this one myself, but Pepper Mill has. As you drive around the Washington DC Beltway, you sudenly come upon the Mormon Temple, looming like a fairytale castle in the Maryland countryside. Apparently some Wag wrote on an overpass:
Surrender, Dorothy!
In the men’s room of the airport in Minneapolis: Beware of Republican Senators!
My husband saw it. I was wondering why he came out of the bathroom cracking up laughing.
Reported in a Bill James book:
First handwriting: Jesus is the Answer!
Second: What is the question?
Third: Who is Matty and Felipe’s brother?
I love that one. (My mother is an avid knitter, but that’s one pattern she hasn’t mastered . . . 
)
In a tiny burg about 10 miles from our house that we drive through all the time, there’s a sharp curve that brings a white house and garage into prominent view. One night we rounded the curve to the sight of FUCK YOU TOM painted on the garage door in huge, angry black letters. It was quickly painted over, of course, but we still think of it as the FUCK YOU TOM house, and we’re about 99% certain that it was done by a woman. Hell hath no fury . . .
Even more ironic, these often signs now read “UNNECESSARY NOISE PROHIBITED”. Leaving a gray area the size of Manhattan open for interpretation, of course.
Graffiti-wise, the only ones that come to my mind are a rebuttal to the slogan “FIGHT THE POWER!” where someone else wrote under it, “…with different power!”, and “ANARCHY NOW” (with the circle/A logo) and the subtitled addition, “corporate hegemony later”.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the wordless modification of the new “DON’T WALK” lights that don’t have any text, just symbols of a walking pedestrian (for Walk) or a palm-facing hand (for Don’t Walk).
The Don’t Walk hand has individual fingers depicted, and people have been taping black masking tape over the fingers of the Don’t Walk light, leaving only one finger visible. Your guess as to which finger it is.
Also recorded is a devil’s horn sign variant (as done at heavy metal concerts).
I once got out of a train carriage only to see that it was completely sprayed over with silver pant and with the words painted on it “Humans aren’t meant to see angels” in gold
And I could swear the train was the standard yellow when I entered the train,
I thought it was kinda cool
Seen on a bathroom wall in the early 80’s:
“I’d rather have a burning sensation than boogie shoes.”
