Sometimes it’s difficult to know when you’re being played. For example, we’re told that this upside-down sign is an old-school marketing gimmick designed to sneakily gain attention and generate conversation:
And then there are emails like this:
Would you mind posting a link to my graffiti blog on your web site? I know there is a lot of graffiti on the hill but this person is terrorizing our neighborhood, especially near Boylston ave in between Denny Way and Pine Street as well as Cal Anderson Park. I would like this person to be charged with the felony they deserve when caught and put an end to this once and for all by documenting as much evidence as I can. If anyone has any other pictures to add to the blog please feel free to email me.
Thank you!
http://seattlecrownsandhearts.tumblr.com/ You can also make graffiti reports here:http://www.seattle.gov/police/
prevention/graffiti.htm
Finally, if you could stop linking pictures of this graffiti from other people’s flickr accounts it may help to stop encouraging tagging in our neighborhood.
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/docx/9253633031/in/ pool-484380@N20
We hope that nobody is taking advantage of our gullibility.
Really? Someone tagging crowns and hearts in our neighborhood is this person’s biggest concern? Hearts and crowns over SH!TBARF and hellawasted? Hearts and crowns are “terrorizing our neighborhood?” Give me a break.
Most of these tags are on sidewalks or dumpsters. The sidewalk tags will quickly fade away. The dumpsters… are dumpsters. Come on.
Seems more like a personal vendetta. Or someone who is a little too gung-ho about the gentrification this neighborhood is experiencing.
Of ALL the graffiti out there, this person is “terrorized” by hearts and crowns?! Certainly if expressionist graffiti is so horrifically offensive, perhaps some of the actually potentially OFFENSIVE text/artwork should be the focus here. The ridiculous concerns in the above piece is easily the most laughable, superficial, and downright stupid complaint I’ve heard about our neighborhood in my entire 17 years here.
Moreover, ya want some real complaints about present day Capitol Hill? How about pricing out long time residents and working artists, the sanitization and ousting of genuine grass roots culture, the shutting down and knocking down of the small businesses and historical buildings that comprise our history, and finally, the incessant whining about stupid s*** by people with the mindsets of spoiled housewives/husbands from Bel Air?
For those of us who don’t participate in graffiti art but appreciate it as a genre, check out a place where it’s not only recognized for what it is but celebrated:
http://www.newsday.com/travel/miami-devotes-a-park-to-graffiti-art-1.3482736
Enjoy!
Exactly.
The problem is this: The vast majority of graffiti is tagging and other such crap, and by no stretch of the imagination is this “art.” It’s vandalism, it’s illegal, and it’s casting a scourge on the neighborhood. Of course there are more serious crimes, but that doesn’t mean that graffiti should be condoned.
Ok. But why this particular tag? Why just focus on this one person with a tag as innocuous as a heart or crown? Why not the person tagging SH!TBARF everywhere? Or why not the people tagging massive 10 foot illegible scrawls?
If you look at that tumblr, half of the tags this person is documenting are in the midst of much bigger and uglier tags and graffiti. If you hate graffiti there are way better ways to go after it than to go after the one person whose tag is kind of sweet, and small. Go after the ones that actually have offensive words or are big and actually defacing something other than dumpsters and sidewalks and temporary construction walls.
The real scourge is all the people coming into Capitol Hill and trying to sterilize this neighborhood and turn it into an Eastsider’s paradise.
Innocuous? Small? Sweet? I’m glad you think these tags are really cute but if you’ve ever tried to clean graffiti you might change your tune. Have you ever done anything to make your neighborhood better? If you want to go after some of the other graffiti ‘artists’ on the hill I welcome your support but I doubt you will do anything except complain about one person that is.
Yes, innocuous. Yes, small. Yes, sweet. It’s a 3-5″ heart. It is a symbol of love. The notion that these tags amount to “terrorism” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Terrorism is having your legs blown off while you’re running a a marathon, or being run over for protesting the demolition of your city’s park, having a gun held to your head and being forced into doing something horrible, etc. There is nothing about these tags that is meant to illicit a state of fear and terror. Maybe if they were swastikas… but they’re not.
Covering it up looks worse. A gray blob is uglier than a small red heart.
Yes, I have had to paint over graffiti on my old building. It is not a particularly difficult task.
This neighborhood is my neighborhood. It has been for the last 13 years. No, I’m not going to go after other graffiti because I think there are a lot of other things happening in this neighborhood that are much more worthy of concern. Just because I don’t feel inclined to involve myself in witch-hunts of graffiti artists doesn’t mean I don’t do anything positive for my neighborhood.
And the whole point is that this person is not going after artistS. They are going after one person because their tag stands out a little bit from the other dozens (maybe hundreds?) who tag around here. If they succeed in catching this person, then what? We go back to illegible white, black and silver scrawls, maybe a few with nice penmanship that say dumb things like ‘hellawasted’ and the hearts and crowns are gone. There will still be graffiti on dumpsters, the backs of signs, some sidewalks. But this person will rest easy knowing they saved the neighborhood from hearts and crowns! Hooray!
On my walk to work this morning i noticed a giant crown spray painted onto the once awesome supersonics mural on boylston and olive street. Not “sweet” K- Painting over graffiti is not a particularly hard task but cleaning it off a boulder, tree or other thing that cannot be painted over is- doubt you’d know much about that though, you’re too busy decrying the gentrification that lead to your rent increase. Also, your argument that graffiti keeps the hill from turning into the eastside is laughable. Kudos to whomever is trying to stop this and make our neighborhood better. While it will likely never go away entirely at least someone is trying to help and keep others aware.
gary,
it’s amazing how much you know about what i don’t know about and what i spend all my time doing! are you following me?
i agree that it’s lame that this crown and hearts person tagged over someone else’s art.
again, my objection is to equating a spray-painted heart or crown on a stone, sidewalk, or dumpster with terrorism. that notion is simply ridiculous, and a bit offensive.
also, i think starting a witch-hunt for ONE tagger out of hundreds in this neighborhood simply because they have a more recognizable tag is a waste. i would have more respect for this effort if this person were interested in minimizing graffiti tags in our neighborhood as a whole, not just crowns & hearts. it still seems more like a personal vendetta to me.
I think previous posts may have missed the point. The crown and hearts seem to be someone who documents their OWN CRAPPY TAGS with tumblr, and then sent a fake email to try and get more visibility.
Lame graffiti. I hope someone tags their ugly face with something just as lame.
There is some cool graffiti in the world, but mostly it is just terrible graffiti or somebody tagging a building. What I’d like to know is who keeps painting over the awesome Nyan Cat on East Madison Street above the Ding Ho Cleaners. I walk to work on East Madison everyday and seeing a huge Nyan Cat made me smile a little on the inside every morning. Now I just sigh and hope someone restores it to its original glory. Oh Nyan Cat – Have you been foresaken?
I agree with “k” that the hearts/crowns are relatively aesthetic and even close to “art,” but the problem is “where do you draw the line?” One person’s art is another person’s ugly graffiti. When you condone any graffiti, you are implicitly condoning all of it. And some people seem to forget that all of it is illegal, or doesn’t that matter?
I also think that graffiti vandalism is a very selfish act. Someone…a homeowner, a business owner, city workers (SPU and SDOT)…. has to clean it up at some point, and that takes time and money. Yes, private property owners can hire one of the companies that exist just to clean up graffiti, but that can get pretty expensive.
YOU GOT TROLLED! durrrrrr….
Just fyi, bad or good as you may think the art is, it does helpb the economy, it does cause thought and discussion, educated or not. It is ART and should be a welcome change to our gray gray and light gray concrete walkways streets and even the green waste receptacles, thoes too are so bland and pacifying, all colors lost, buildings, sky, and hearts of locals, apparently (more pun intended), it creates a lost education. like it or not, the law doesnt mean that the right thing has been written in to our legal system, and if people had any self worth left in this country, theyd start breaking thoes laws that are oppressive fascist and even stupid. We pay for these streets, the garbage cans, and your right to hate love is fine, but hunt the pervert sexual deviant who might be my landlord, or the killer in the park that no ones talking about.
But you’d have to have strength and courage to dossomething that matters, isn’t that right?