Sunday, September 17, 2006
PLAYING TAG
The current scourge in SFO:
In San Francisco, a Plague of Stickers Opens a New Front in the Graffiti War
Let's get one thing straight. The headline is misleading. We are really talking about 'tagging' here.
Graffiti is/are those little messages that are written here and there in public places; toilet stalls, places like that.
Tagging is the big, non-literate, picture drawings. They are letters but there is no message.
I love graffiti and am always ready to read it and even contribute to it.
I am quite ambivalent about tagging.
I would not want any on my home's stucco wall or in my neighborhood.
On the other hand I am quite amused and captivated by tags that appear elsewhere.
Sort of your basic NIMBY attitude.
It was like an art gallery. I had my favorites and I looked for new intallations.
I love the big ballooning letters. The colors. The outrageousness of it. I am drawn to the transgressive.
We don't have any good tagging here. No plague. It is all pretty small potatoes. I don't think that I have ever seen graffiti either.
Both are urban, I think.
The local anti-tagging effort is pretty simple. The 'art' just gets painted over; fast!
The other thing is that we have few places to hide. You need locations that are public and, at the same time, private. That is why train-ways and subway cars are so vulnerable. Thousands see them during the day but at night there is no one around them.
We are in the wide open spaces.
You also need some talent. Urban locations have a large pool of talented artists.
I fantasize myself as a tagger sometimes.
I am at a time in my life where a lot of folks try 'hobbies'. Maybe tagging would be fun. The problem is that it is night work. I would have to get it done before 8 PM or, first thing when I get up at 3-4 AM.
Maybe our stucco walls would be OK.
