After I saw a tweet asking whether
tagging could be considered art, I wondered whether the author lived in a neighbourhood covered in it. Sure I've seen a few creative stencils appear on my garage door, but most of the time the taggers seem to be interested only in hitting every surface until they run out of paint. And no, that's not your territory you're marking like a dog, that's my private property.
Also it irks me to not be able to walk more than a few feet in any direction without running into this stuff. I remember the first time I went to New York in the mid 80s. Times Square was till a druggie nightmare, but they had started cleaning up the subway cars. At the time I was sorely disappointed not to see the rolling canvases immortalized in70s tv and movies, like
Welcome Back Kotter or
The Warriors. (When the film got turned into a video game, it was publicized with...
graffiti.) Still I appreciated the concept of cleaning up your backyard to improve morale and try to bring down the crime rate by looking like someone gave a damn. Now I'm the ornery property owner.
So, here is a quick tour of College St, between Spadina and Bathurst, with a short detour down a typical alleyway. I have selected a representational sample meant to show what types of surfaces are tagged; this is only a fraction of the actual paint out there....
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| street sign poles |
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| backs of street signs |
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| garbage bins |
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| traffic stanchions |
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| traffic light poles |
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| buildings that have already been repainted multiple times |
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| news boxes |
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| glass doors |
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| glass brick |
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| parking meters |
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| security coverings |
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| directories |
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| plastic damaged from trying to clean off previous graffiti |
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| benches |
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| scratched into windows |
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| utility poles |
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| utility boxes |
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| tops of buildings, including those under construction |
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| skinny poles |
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| fat poles |
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| fronts of street signs |
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| bike racks (covered illegally but aesthetically in blue paint) |
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| this is what happens when they don't teach cursive in school |
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| non-Bell phone booth |
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| sides of houses |
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| hoarding |
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| no, I don't live in a ghetto - it's just Kensington Market |
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| church benches |
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| apparently small children, or possibly dogs, are getting involved |
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| mail boxes |
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| fences |
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| trash cans |
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| someone has a sick sense of humour |
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| trees. TREES! |
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| papered-over failed businesses |
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| transit shelters |
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| pipes (note how they complement the lovely poster-shred-covered utility pole?) |
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| construction signs |
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| Poop Machine |
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| graffiti on graffiti |
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| height no problem |
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| more graffiti on graffiti crime |
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| even nice pictures aren't immune |
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| this is more typical of the garage doors around here |
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| graffiti might actually be an improvement here |
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| even residential cable boxes aren't safe |
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| traffic-calming flower boxes |
In the end, the residents' association told me the solution is to clean off your own property as soon as possible (done and done) and to rat out the shop owners who can't be bother to clean up within 24 hrs. Fine - but there are so many and who's really going to enforce it? It would be easier for an enforcement officer to talk a quick walk like I did.
So, is it an urban scourge, or am I lucky to be in the middle of a "street art" gallery?
Next time: my rebuttal of the pro-tagging article....
