No message here, but I remember the “Cool” Disco Dan graffiti in the DC area as being quite bold.
There’s a overpass on highway 580 in California heading west that my husband and I drive under frequently on the way to his mother’s house in Sacramento. One time the graffiti on it said: “Aaron and Holly FOREVER!”
A couple months later: “Holly is a ho!”
and a couple months later: “LOVE STINKS!” and in a different paint/style “yeah, yeah.”
It’s been painted over for years, and I assume Aaron has moved on with his life and loves, but we chuckle every time we drive by and refer to it as the “love stinks bridge.”
GRETTA CHAMBERS IS A LOVELY LADY BUT BERNIE SHAPIRO IS A FINK.
(referring to the former chancellor and principal of McGill University)
I saw one in Krakowthat had a stencil of a guy with a gun to his head. Next to it was written (in polish) “Communist Opression/Capitalist Fanatacism”
But my favorite is this one , from Bucharest. The photo speaks for itself.
Early 90s, the men’s room in the English Department at the University of Georgia:
I’m running through life like Dolomite
And then someone had come along with a red pen and corrected the grammar:
I’m running like Dolomite through life
Only in an English department, I suppose.
The somewhat famous one I saw (don’t know if it’s still there) was “Surrender Dorothy” on an overpass on the MD-DC Beltway. Just after the sign the highway turns and you see the Mormon Temple, which happens to look a hell of a lot like the Emerald City.
One from my hometown has stuck with me for it’s grammar and content. Spray-painted on a railroad overpass was the words “tuna is augly fish”. Just like that, no space between the a and the ugly. It’s sorta like Lewis Black’s “If it wasn’t for my horse” line. It will never leave my brain. It’s been at least 25 years since that was painted over.
On a faded-to-white pedestrian only sign in my home town (It’s in Cathedral Square for those of you who want to visit)
‘No Spontaneous Fish Impressions’
I can confidently say it’s the least disobeyed traffic sign in the city.
On the toilet cistern of a pub somewhere in Soho, London (it was a long night, many years ago, don’t expect me to remember the name of the pub)
‘Iä, Iä Shub-Niggurath, dark goat of the woods with a thousand young’
Now I know full well what that’s about, but what the hell was the motivation in writing it in there? Gave my gaming friends who I was out with a good laugh though.
One Fish
Two Fish
Red Fish
Blue Fish
Buttcheese.
** -Uptown Bar. Minneapolis.**
Stillwater Cub Produce Department Rules!
** -University of Saint Thomas, Saint Paul.**
God saves.
But Gretzky scores on the rebound!
** -Sweeney’s, Saint Paul.**
Satin Lives!
** -Underpass, Saint Paul’s East Side.**
Free Mumia!
Limit. One per customer.
When I was abot 10 or 11, I was riding with my dad in his package delivery truck. On the wall of some loading dock, someone had painted “BUTFUCK!” I laughed for about 10 minutes, of course, and my dad said, “They spelled ‘BUTT’ wrong.”
G
To commemorate this thread and the childhood memories it brought back I changed my sig.
Nice name george, there are a few georgers around here.
One I always used to see riding the train into Toronto: “Humpty Dumpty was pushed!”
And in the Arts building at my university, I went to the ladies room, sat myself down and on the toilet paper dispenser was written: “Sociology degrees, please take one.”
Poignant one, on the Berlin Wall (when it still stood)
“Auch diesem Mauer verdanken wir unsern Adolf”
(This wall, too, courtesy of our Adolf)
Showed some pretty decent insight in cause and effect on a geopolitical and historical scale.
I’ve always loved that one. I think it’s still there, but the last few times I drove to DC on 95 it was dark and I didn’t see.
Two others (both in Boston):
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On Storrow Drive (which runs roughly parallel to the Charles River on the Boston side), there’s a sign that once said “Reverse Curve”. It now reads “Reverse the Curse”. Or at least it did the last time I saw it.
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On green (E) line going inbound from the VA hospital, I spied a piece of graffiti that was neither funny, artistically inspired, nor prominently placed. But it fit my mood perfectly, and it remains my favorite. In white/very pale blue spray paint on a red brick wall, it read “I am alone.” (Of course, I have no way of knowing if that was a simple statment that the graffiti above it was done alone or if the author was thinking on a more existential bent.)
On the I-70 and I-79 South junction near Washington, PA there is a very high, long, curved wall that was put in place because of all the truckers that were turning over as they tried to round the bend coming North on I-79 toward West on I-70.
Someone wrote in red spray paint, down the entire length of that wall:
“Imagine having sex at 169 mph and then all of a sudden coming to a complete stop.”
It was that way for years until the wall, which was badly damaged, was rebuilt.
About fifteen years ago, I lived near a footbridge over Route 29 in Columbia Maryland. It was covered with loud, bold graffiti.
In apparent response to this, someone had written in small, ordinary-looking letters:
Peace Through Vandalism
Romanes eunt domus!
On a bathroom stall door in the first floor mens’ room in the art building at the University of Texas at Austin, back in 1993/1994:
"God is Love
Love is Blind
Ray Charles is Blind…
RAY CHARLES IS GOD."
I’ve seen this. It. Is. Awesome!
Or, as the one I saw at my college read: More people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in nuclear power plants. If you’re wondering, this was a few years before the Chernobyl disaster.
In a restroom at the same school (Virginia Wesleyan), a bigot had attempted to scrawl a racist message, but he dropped one g, so the graffito read NUKE NIGERS! Underneath, somebody explained: Niger is the name of a river in Africa. It’s also a country through which that river flows. There really isn’t that much there worth nuking.
If you like literate graffiti, check out this book. I own a copy, and can thus recommend the title with confidence.
In a bar in Springfield, IL, about four feet above the urinal.
“If you can piss this high, join the Fire Department”
In a bar in Champaign, IL. just over the TP dispenser.
“U of I Diplomas, take one.”