I was in a high-end bathroom of a very high-end hotel for a conference this week in Pittsburgh. I was marvelling at the quality of the bathrooms, with their heavy doors and fully walled stall dividers, polished marble floors, potted plants, ample mirrors, and flattering lighting.
Then I saw, written on one of the stall walls in pen, a line of chinese characters. At least I’m assuming they’re chinese, maybe they were japanese. Either way I really wish I knew what they said.
Graffiti knows no bounds.
Seen above a men’s urinal:
Don’t look up here, the joke’s in your hand.
One that annoyed me for years was on the wall at one of the subway stations in downtown Chicago:
STOP FACIST DICTATORS
Every time I saw it, all I could think was “Are there countries where the government is run by someone who discriminates against people with particular facial features?”
That reminds me of high school, when someone scratched a swastika and “Not-Z” into a desk. I laughed to the point of tears when I saw it.
A really cute, cartoon style monkey, with angel wings and a halo, holding a pitchfork.
I’m still a bit perplexed about that one.
My kids and I were stopped at a train crossing, kind of zoning out watching the train cars pass, when suddenly one went by that was decorated with a picture of a devil flipping us the bird. We looked at each other with total amazement before we burst out laughing.
Somewhere along the Pittsburgh riverfront, I saw “I heart the Yinzer dialect” written exactly like that.
At Baylor University, the bathroom stalls had Bible verses scribbled on them. A little light reading on the can. 
Robin
Somehow, that seems like it should go along with this:
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/~davea/porosity.html
which I used to see frequently when I lived in the Bay Area.
During the early 1980s, near where I was growing up (suburbs of Buffalo, NY), there was a disused train bridge (long since torn down).
On one side wall, someone had spray-painted “Elvis Costello is God.”
On the other wall, somebody else spray-painted “Oh my Elvis Costello!”
Rudest graffiti I ever saw: In “the Phoenix” (bar in Manhattan’s east village) - “You’re the load of cum your mother should have swallowed”.
It was a movie. I was once beaten up by the filmaker’s girlfriend. Small world.
On my street in Copenhagen, someone has written in great big letters on the end wall of one of the buildings:
“I always feel like shoplifting”
- I guess I like the honesty of it.
I had never seen conversation-style bathroom graffiti until using the women’s restroom in Angel Hall at the U here. Mostly it reads like an advice column. ‘‘I’m totally in love with this guy, but he’s not ready to get married yet. What should I do?’’ And then paragraphs and paragraphs of apparently well-thought out responses, with arguments back and forth between what is ‘‘best’’ for this random girl who didn’t even give much insight into the issue in the first place.
I was so irritated by the complete inundation of the wall with references to guys and guy trouble, and so filled up with my own thoughts and ideas, that I felt compelled to write on a bathroom stall for the first time in my life:
"THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEPRESSION. I HAVE FOUND IT. 
‘’
It was kind of a ‘‘moment’’ for me, being my last day of undergraduate school.
Guess I was just hoping it would encourage someone along the way. I think the world needs more positive graffiti.
Here’s some. NSFW, and if you are offended by language then don’t click it.
There are a couple of other lengthy graffiti threads on the boards. My favorite is this one.
I haven’t personally spotted any great graffiti, but there are two stories from the above thread that I cherish.
On a desk in a college library: “Godot, waited and waited for you. What gives?”
And, in the music building on University of Texas’ Austin campus, there is a staircase that goes down half a level from the first floor and ends in a blank, brick wall. There, in the grout between the brick, someone had penciled, “For the love of God, Montressor!”
If crude drawings of asses are considered NSFW, do not click the FIRST TWO.
A brilliant bit of graffiti on the line near my home. ‘SPADZ’. Not immediately obvious why its so good but the word ‘spad’ on the railway refers to ‘signal passed at danger’ and the tagger had chosen a wall right by a signal to proclaim themselves to teh world.
Sadly now painted over and some less interesting tags in its place. Kept me amused for months though.
With the simple addition of two strokes, somebody has altered a stenciled sign on the back of a downtown building, changing “PRIVATE PARKING” into “PRIMATE PARKING”. It happens to be the local YWCA building, so I wonder if one of the women there did it herself to imply that men should park in the alley, not in the lot.
Heard about, but haven’t seen it myself: written on the inside of a toilet stall door, in tiny letters, at the very bottom edge, so that you have to lean waaaaay forward to read it: “You are now shitting at a 45-degree angle.”
The most amusing graffiti I’ve actually seen myself, in a tavern men’s room: Somebody had written above the urinal, “Drive truck, and your worries for money are over!” Somebody else added immediately below it, “Yeah, 'cuz you don’t have time to spend it.”
I work near the railroad tracks, and for the last several months I’ve been seeing one train car after another spray-painted with the name (?) “Stinky Stew”. Sometimes it’s on every car in a train.
My favorite exchange was written on the wall of a stall in the Men’s restroom, Second Floor, Sproul Hall, UCBerkeley, circa 1991:
Jeff P - Class of 1990
below that was written
Chuck R - Class of Whenever I get Enough Credits
I’m not sure if this counts as Graffiti, and I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s a sign above the endmost seats on most trains here in the UK, saying “Please give up this seat if an elderly or disabled person needs it”, but someone had coloured in some of the letters the same colour as the background, so this particular sign said: “Please eat an elderly or disabled person”.
I’ve also seen examples of Push button, Receive Bacon in the wild, but of course not the original one.
