Okay. I know graffiti is illegal. It destroys property and can hurt people. But in spite of this, I’ve seen some darn funny graffiti out there.
I was waiting at a bus shelter recently. Our transit system is less than stellar, btw. Anyway, There was a schedule posted outside the shelter. Someone had taken a marker and crossed out all the times, and then finished by writing “FUCK BUS!!!” at the bottom. Guess they weren’t happy with the service…
Another time, when I was in highschool, I arrived one morning to find that someone had spray-painted in huge letters on the front of the building:
“GOD, MY BALLS ITCH!!!”
It was a Catholic school, to boot.
It was all painted over by that afternoon, but you could see where the new paint was, so for a couple months the school advertised to the city that it had itchy balls.
What kind of funny/interesting graffiti have you seen?
Back in the '80s, Buffalo, NY was having hard times, and a lot of its buildings were empty and boarded up. Around the same time, several blocks in downtown Hamilton, ON were the same, and one day someone spray-painted on one of the boarded-up windows, the memorable slogan: “WELCOME TO FUBALO!”
It was there for a long time.
Bathroom in Winnemucca, NV
In a lousy hand: “I f—ed your muther!”
Right below: “Shut up, Dad, you’re drunk.”
Sign in London: “Bill posters will be prosecuted.”
Written below: “Bill Posters is innocent!”
Thinking about it more, the Tune Inn here in DC has a long-running series of writings that revolve around the theme of Bill Garrow being a big, fat f–k. I’m sure most people have no idea if Bill Garrow is a real person or not, but its good reading.
On the stop signs around my house, someone has placed stickers so that the signs now read “Stop Racism”, “Stop Violence”, “Stop Homophobia”, “Stop Go”, etc. Very nice stuff, I wish I knew who did that.
Near U of T there’s a big construction project going on, and signs are posted everywhere on the walls around the construction site–big red signs saying ‘Warning’ with a blank underneath, where construction workers usually write “falling bricks” or “open sewer” or something like that. One time I was walking past, and in the blank underneath ‘Warning’ someone had written “weapons of mass destruction”. That gave me a good laugh.
In elementary school, we had a project where everyone went around and painted yellow fishes near the sewer grates on the local sidewalks, to remind people not to pour pesticides or paint or cleaning products down those grates and harm the environment. Recently, I found one of the old yellow fishes near my house, found a tube of yellow paint at home, and turned the fish into a Darwin fish. I don’t know if anybody will get it, but I was proud of myself.
Here in Gainesville, there’s a wall on one of the major streets that’s legal to graffiti on. It was only recently that it became official, but for many years before that the police would look the other way. It seems to work, because there’s very little graffiti in other parts of the city.
Anyway, on this wall is a memorial to the students killed in the Gainesville Murders back in 1990. It’s just a black square with the names and a wreath. It’s mostly left alone, and when it is painted over, someone always freshens it up within a day or two. Very nice sentiment. The wall itself is also a great idea that I think other places should emulate.
Also, in the men’s rooms at IUPUI, the local custom was to write on the grout between the tiles on the wall grout-related puns: “Grout Expectations”, “Having a Grout Time”, etc.
years (and years and years) ago, on a bathroom stall in the old uiniversity of chicago fieldhouse - back when the place had a red clay runnin gtrack and they used to hold aau indoor track meets, i saw something that has stuck with me to this day:
richard nixon took his wife to see deep throat four times before he finally got it down pat.
Years (and years and years) ago, on a bathroom stall in the old University of Chicago fieldhouse - back when the place had a red clay runnin gtrack and they used to hold AAU indoor track meets, i saw something that has stuck with me to this day:
Richard Nixon took his wife to see Deep Throat four times before he finally got it down Pat.
There’s a tunnel near my old apartment that is a very active graffiti site. It never ceases to amaze me what will show up in there. Among the highly talented endeavors, there’s also the requisite stencil tags. My favorite one is a kid’s big wheel (sort of a low-rider tricycle made entirely of plastic for those of you missed the pleasure of big wheel hand-brake turns ). That one always made me smile.
