I hate graffiti.
Whether it’s some scumbag “tagging” anything that doesn’t move or some baseball capped hipster trying to make the Toon’s Metro looks like a New York subway.
I don’t care if they have talent. Even “good” graffiti is still horrible America-derived wannabe awfulness. The kind of thing that “wacky” people working in youth marketing think is cool
I don’t care if it fecking Banksy. What, it’s okay if it’s clever and middle class folks like it? Who draws that line?
So I really hate this.
Most of all I hate that fact that in this instance my usual instincts to rally against the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade deserts me. F*ck the little f*ckers.
I don’t believe this stuff is a cry for attention or a display from a frustrated artist looking for a break. I don’t believe it is any kind of protest at all.
Unfortunately, It’s just another moron.
* Kudos to new boys/girls Newcastlecentric who broke the story. Expect the local papers to catch up soon.
7 comments
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June 18, 2008 at 4:01 pm
minxlj
There’s a huge difference between moronic tagging and true graffiti. OK, so graffiti isn’t to everybody’s taste to start with – all art/design/illustration forms are subjective – but some of the good stuff is actually really good.
However, this isn’t any form of art. It isn’t the talented graffiti artists doing this, it’s not some kind of BALTIC art installation – it’s stupid teenaged chavs wanting their damn names on the wall without any respect for the monument or its history.
June 18, 2008 at 4:17 pm
ourmanwhere
I don’t doubt that good grafitti artists have talent but I still hate that stuff – it always seems to be in and around train stations and I always find it depressing. It’s just suggests urbans squalor in a particular American way.
Why do we want our public spaces to look like American ghettos?
In the end you can’t crack down on moronic taggers but go easy on the talented ones. If you damage public property in this way then you have to expect the authorities to come down hard on you. It is not for courts/police/local authorities to decide the relative merits of each spray can splodge.
Most of all I hate names scratched in glass and perspex. The first day at the new Tyneside cinema and i saw that the front of the building had a name scratched in it. Every last bus has it too. It looks terrible.
It’s awful when you see the same happened to a newly erected bus stop. I find it quite depressing and it brings down the area in which it is in.
June 18, 2008 at 10:23 pm
petehindle
I used to be really defensive of graffiti, and would defend the difference between tagging and true graffiti. That was until I made the mistake of disagreeing with a local graffiti artist over a matter of style, at which point I was told in no uncertain terms that I was going to have the crap beaten out of me, and that the place where I was working was also a target.
Thanks to that, I now have a radically different stance on graffiti. I’ve started noticing how much of the ugly street furniture we have in public places is due to destructive oiks scratching their names into stuff. Even the bigger stuff is just rehashing the old-school NY pieces. I’ve no patience for it at all these days, and it’s not because I’m getting old – I’m just tired of it.
June 18, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Mosh
Well, it’s either scratch their names in it or just smash the stuff up. We are talking about the filth we sadly call the “youth of today”.
Oh help me. I sound so *old*.
June 22, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Chevy
I just wish they would “come down hard” on these prats. The amount of pre-planning and effort just to do domething so antisocial is as annoying as it is mind-boggling. They must have used abseling equipment to do the stuff on the ‘other’ railway bridge over the Tyne. It’s spreading into areas like the Ouseburn now too – the moronic tagging on the metro viaduct there is really intrusive. Carve their tags into their foreheads! Grrrr
June 24, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Gareth Smith
To many of you above, please gain a clue before you begin opening your mouths and voicing your opinion. “They must have used abseling equipment”..
Why MUST they have used abseiling equipment? i get quite angry reading your mindless and ignorant rants. And i’m not some “daft chav” as some of idiots would like to believe. You MUST realise graffiti has been around for thousands of years, and it is’t going to stop. Throughout time people have tried to leave their mark upon this earth, and graffiti is one of those ways. Also one last thing, if graffiti was legal. would you think differently, if their wasn’t already this misconception that graffiti is a negative thing, could graffiti be perceived differently by me and you.
June 24, 2008 at 2:27 pm
ourmanwhere
Gareth, your arguments make no sense.
If graffitti was legal would i think differently. No. Would I think differently if murder was legal? Or if theft was legal? No. Stupid argument. The fact that it makes my city look like crap has nothing to do with whether or not it is legal. I hate it because how ugly it is.
I assume you view yourself as some kind of graffitti artist – well what gives you the right to make a decision on what “art” I should see? I hate all that wannabe American stuff but I still have to see it sprayed all over the trains and the stations. Why should you choose what I see?
Why should I have to contibute to removing the crap that you spray on walls because no one wanted it? Are you arrogant enough to believe that you are so talented everyone will love what you do?
You have talent? It’s possible? Who knows? So buy some paper and scribble on it. Paint your own walls. Spray paint your garden fence. You ask me if the fact that it is illegal influences me. I ask, does it influence you? Isn’t that why you do it? There are plenty of places to that you can paint legally so why choose the illegal one?
Why should something, like the High Level Bridge, which we are all proud of, get defaced by talentless prats? Look at the pic linked above – are you really telling me that it improves the look of the bridge?