Graffiti

When I was about 15years old I went out one evening with one of my oldest friends for a wander around the 'hood - as you do. We didn’t have a lot planned – only so much you can do on a Friday night when you’re a skint pubescent – so we ended up meeting up with a friend of his who was really into graffiti. Cool. 

Ahem…

So out we went to scrawl something insignificant on some motorway pillar or whatever. At the time I was pretty fascinated by it all. We watched ‘Johnny’ ‘paint’ something or other on this pillar underneath the motorway and by the end, I was expected to regard his artwork (that’s what they like to call it) as sheer genius.

I was so taken aback at this mindless vandalism that the street significance of this vague form of art passed me by. So much so that I asked the ‘artist’ himself why he didn’t sign his name at the bottom…? Apparently, he had ‘drawn’ a tag which was a signature albeit a vague and irrelevant one to me.

So that was my introduction to the world of graffiti and after that, I realised that it wasn't for me. In fact, since then I have regarded every piece of graffiti I have ever had the misfortune to see as not only vandalism but also a rather unsightly mess.

There are legendary bits of graffiti near me and the ‘artists’ who scrawled them in a haze of magic mushrooms or even strong cider back in the early 80s still pat themselves on the back every time they drive by their work

LED ZEP HASH is certainly one whose presence has been on the railway bridge above the Peugeot garage for as long as I can remember.

My dislike for graffiti was brought to a head one evening when after a few beers at the local we walked out and saw for the umpteenth time a pathetic scrawl in red spray paint saying the immortal words JESUS LOVES YOU.

I had walked past this piece of religious encouragement for as long as I could remember but after a particularly heavy chat one night about religion, we deduced that the boys and I were in fact born-again atheists and it had to go.

We weren't sure how to counteract this ‘in your face’ religious slant but after minimal consideration, we popped back to my place, grabbed a can of Hammerite and in the blink of an eye changed their beloved slogan into something slightly more sinister. Now reading JESUS LOVES YOUR MONEY we walked away contented that we’d swung the balance back to neutral.

The following morning, however, I happened to walk past the station wall to see that our counter-activity had been sabotaged. Returned back to its original state, the Christian slogan had been restored in all its glory leaving no evidence of our work at all. 

Perhaps it was the work of God...?

We weren't having that. 

We’d done our time discussing at length our religious views and having reached our conclusion were highly irritated that those who had gone down the same path and reached their conclusion were able to air their choice and we weren't.

So we hatched a plan. At 2am one Saturday evening after a veritable skin-full we decided to pop into a fellow accomplice’s dad’s garage and get some tools to seek our revenge. Armed with the necessary equipment we assembled at 2.30am on either side of the 100m long bridge. With two more accomplices keeping guard at each end we waited for the all-clear and, clad in balaclavas we went to work.

Within a couple of minutes, we were done, back in the car and miles away before the paint was dry. In response to three 12-inch high words scrawled in red paint on an old wooden fence, our contribution to this religious conversation was: 

JESUS DIED FOR HIS OWN SINS - NOT MINE!

Pretty heavy eh?

We managed, to our credit to work well together without a spelling mistake or a word out of place and walked away pleased with our message. We'd writen this message in 8-foot-high lettering (I forget the exact font) and done with 9" rollers in pure brilliant white deluxe emulsion.  

It was sure to rock the very affluent area's residents. Front page of the Surrey Herald?!! 

I cycled past at 10am the following morning to check out our handiwork but it was long gone. Not a trace.

In seven and a half hours someone had spotted our slander, managed to contact the authorities and within their power they had managed to find someone not only with a sandblaster but who was prepared to use it at 6am Sunday morning. Fair play.

Our notoriety was short-lived.

Maybe it was a sign. My original hatred for the so-called ‘art form’ had been contradicted by my crime. My infamy was short-lived – four and a half hours in fact – and I was a little gutted that the impact I had been hoping for whilst I lay in my bed at 3am that morning was kept to a minimum.

Perhaps this is the reason why I have not only changed my view but have found myself loathing graffiti more and more. The older I get I realise that although the message I was hoping to convey was powerful and brash there are better and more effective ways to get it across.

I went to Rome recently and had a lovely time. We saw the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican and all the ancient pillars I could handle. It was awe-inspiring. To think that some of these pillars could date back a thousand years before the ‘Son of God’ was even a twinkle in his dad’s eye was just mind-blowing.

But why oh why do the delinquent youths of Roma have to sprinkle their mindless multi-coloured piss-in-a-can over it all? It’s such a shame.

Giorgio! Giovanni! Guiseppe! I can only assume had been scrawled over every ancient monolith and it frankly ruined my entire experience of one of the world's greatest ancient cities.

And it begs the question, “What’s the point?”

If you followed me around the Underground of London whilst I wrote with an indelible pen DAVE everywhere, you would wonder what had gotten into me, wouldn’t you?

For some reason, this behaviour appears to be considered ‘quite cool’ within the street kid fraternity. I blame the parents. But even with this failsafe logic I still can’t see the attraction. You hop on the train anywhere in the world and for miles and miles some aberrant youth has considered it a worthy Saturday afternoon spent to write his ‘TAG” in large silver spray paint every 25 yards along the track. GARY or WINSTON or whatever is strewn in the identically illegible typeface – you know the one – down the entire stretch of the Waterloo to Portsmouth line.

So what does it achieve? I’ll tell you what it achieves – nothing. Nothing but tens of millions of pounds of tax-payer’s money to remove this diatribe from the walls of your ‘hood. 

At least my message had a sentiment!

What worries me most is that although the current government acknowledges this art form as a major financial, social and political issue the governing body of the 2012 London Olympics has taken upon itself in its wisdom to condone this behaviour in such a way as to actually celebrate the work of these criminals by using their work as its official slogan for the event itself. Look it up – it’s terrible.

How many graffiti artists will now use the 2012 London Olympic slogan as an excuse to celebrate their ‘work’?

Carte blanche you say?

Think about it.

CK