Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think of graffiti like I think of hip-hop. There are ARTISTS, and there are taggers. I don't fully respect taggers the way I do actual artists. I think of taggers the way I think of say, Chingy, or Lil Mama. They just try to ride the hip-hop train and get their name out there. Like hip-hop, you take the good with the bad.
Can't stand that "scratchiti" bull**** though. All of it just looks like trash.
Totally agree. If you're just putting your crappy tag everywhere I don't like that. Do something! Anything! Just make it interesting. Thankfully I think a lot of the artists do a lot more than just repeatedly tag their name.
Personally I love graffiti. Any graffiti artist worth a crap knows where to post and where not to post. No one is tagging independence hall or for that matter anything that is nice. Graffiti isn't supposed to make something look worse, it's supposed to make something look better. The majority of graffiti is on abandoned buildings and other similarly garbage looking places.
The link above should give people a good idea of the type of place that is a target for most graffiti artists. Sure there are some morons who will deface personal property or someone's car, or do something else stupid like that. The entire community should not however be held accountable for the poor decisions and lack of talent of a select few.
The craziest graffiti I ever saw was in rome. That city is absolutely covered in graffiti and some of it is pretty insane. the subway trains alone might top the combined effort of most american cities.
as far as north american cities go, i'll probably be labeled a homer but i love philly's street art, especially the pastes. where I live in bella vista there is a fairly famous street artist named joe boruchow, i love walking around the neighborhood and seeing a new piece by him. there aren't many abandoned buildings around me that would make a good place to paste his work so he often utilizes postal boxes, i think they're a great improvement to the blah gray the usps paints them.
San Francisco & Oakland was the epicenter outside NYC at one time, especially with places like Psycho City (on Market near Van Ness) and the 29th Ave tracks (in East Oakland), which were basically a piecer's (muralist's) paradise. That status has started to fade, and I agree what I saw in Philly last summer was much more impressive. Hard to conceive of anywhere other than New York being considered the best, still.
While I do enjoy bombs, tagging up subway cars/buses with gang/crew names is complete BS. I'm glad it isn't as prominent as it was when I was growing up.
Last edited by RaymondChandlerLives; 03-05-2012 at 07:07 PM..
While I do enjoy bomb pieces, tagging up subway cars/buses with gang names is complete BS. I'm glad it isn't as prominent as it was when I was growing up.
LA is a great place for murals and other street art. In the context of this thread, not so sure it can compete.
Though the 18th St. gang is doing their darnedest to tag up all of Yucca St.
While I do enjoy bomb pieces, tagging up subway cars/buses with gang names is complete BS. I'm glad it isn't as prominent as it was when I was growing up.
I'm glad you raised this. Ignoring the murals of Los Angeles is mind-boggeling. Unless you assume a narrow view of the art-form.
LA is a great place for murals and other street art. In the context of this thread, not so sure it can compete.
Though the 18th St. gang is doing their darnedest to tag up all of Yucca St.
True, in the category of graffiti bombs, L.A. does not compete. Murals are another, unrelated story.
I have mixed feelings on this subject. On one hand, the artwork can be impressive. The 5 pointz building is eye-popping and cool. I could stare at it forever. On the other hand, bombing is illegal and, when literally every wall and every subway car and every truck is covered in graffiti (which almost seemed to be the case with NYC in the 70's and 80's), it becomes waaay excessive and unattractive IMO.
Last edited by RaymondChandlerLives; 03-05-2012 at 07:43 PM..
What blows me away is that group of people looked at the beautiful artwork gracing these walls and decided it was just as bad as a member of MS tagging his name on a liquor store wall, and it was time to put a stop to it. That's my take on it, anyway. It's sad and embarrassing. Cleaning up neighborhoods shouldn't mean homogenizing them.
NYC for sure. Philly though, has more. I think the most of any city. Its a part of the city fabric. Murals, etc.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
