h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

unedited and often incoherent ramblings of a graff artist old enough to know better but young enough not to care.....i'm no writer so i just wrote it down as it popped into my head...and damn was it lonely in there

Graff as we like to call it, is an art form...i have a friend who's oil paintings sell for tens of thousands of pounds yet he goes out at night spending his own money to paint huge murals on trains in london.....which hardly ever see the light of day due to london undergrounds policy of never running trains that have been painted
Graffiti in itself doesn't cause damage to walls etc...only the removal process actually does any damage, so why remove it?

Most people agree that the brighly coloured murals in legal "halls of fame" are art...but when confronted with a wall full of "tags" they turn there nose up...but take another look...all the different styles of writing each writer has his own unique handstyle and letterstyles...it's a fantastic splash of colour on an otherwise grey concrete jungle....
People like to think graff has gone away and that is was a passing fad of the 80's but look around you.
Graff is everywhere from the smallest town to the big cities look on walls/bins/trains/tunnels/signs
Each and every painting has a story behind it...next time your on the train LOOK out of the window at the bridges and tracksides you will see our work....
the mission.....our night shift aka.. what it's all about
hats n hoods...up to no good...the reach....the long trackwalk down in silence...senses heightened...paranoia and moonlight picking out threatening shapes in the dark...gravel crunching...teeth grinding...quick check for trakkies...bags open and cans out...quick outline...zippo sparking as you check the sketch...train coming...everyone down...faces flat in the dirt...hoods up....CCTV's glass eye passes you by...time to fill...fat caps...cold cans..no pressure..drips...runs...have to work fast..outline...background..props to the crew and one last tag and your done...step back smile...photo...one flash..then the shorter trackwalk back...job done...a small victory in a bitter guerrilla war of us versus grey...


why do we do it?
I'm 30+ and still do it...thought i would grow out of it...maybe i should of?
Anyways please don't dismiss us as mere vandals, we don't do it to cause upset and destruction and we don't do it to annoy....but i can't really tell you why we do it
maybe it's the fame..maybe it's the thrill of the chase..maybe it's to fend off the doom of old age..could be the rebel in me..who knows..were all different I suppose we all have different reasons...
please visit www.graffiti.org and waste ten mins looking at the UK section..

and spare a moment of reflection to those that have died on the lines for there art.....

props...spy27 tek33 fume teach cept roel

"...i have a friend who's oil paintings sell for tens of thousands of pounds yet he goes out at night spending his own money to paint huge murals on trains in london.."

He actually buys the trains first? Because of course if they belonged to someone else that would be vandalising someone's property, wouldn't it?

Deborah

In other words, it's just a substitute for having a life?

A mural is one thing, mere tagging is another. Grey is actually more attractive!

I can see why, in certain cases, people feel they have to do it. Take the concrete brutalist architecture of the 1960's. Souless shopping precincts and underpasses constructed from slabs of featureless grey concrete. If they can be said to embody anything, it's the word 'indifference'. The builders turn up, build a monstrosity then piss off, leaving behind people who have to live with it from day to day. Is it surprising that graffiti springs up most often in the ugliest of places, as it's merely an attempt to reclaim the territory?
Architects and planners are too distant from the people upon which they inflict their visions. Let *all* the inhabitants (especially the young people) of a village , town or tower block have some say over how their environment looks and a role in shaping it, and graffiti, as we know it, will either die out or become a more integrated part of the landscape.