San Francisco Graffiti

214 points by walz 123 days ago | 242 comments

jasonkester 123 days ago |

I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.

Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.

Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.

It's a shame.

dcposch 123 days ago | |

> You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. > You just want them to stop spraypainting shit.

https://i.imgur.com/qaFgSm7.png

You have it backwards. It's the act of NOT fining them, NOT calling their parents, of ignoring small destructive acts that ruins lives.

Almost everyone doing a 10 year sentence for a serious crime started out by getting away with a lot of small ones.

guywithahat 123 days ago | | |

I agree with everything you said but I don't understand the imgur reference

komali2 123 days ago | |

No accounting for taste, but, graffiti is important whether it's aesthetically pleasing or not.

https://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/

Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city. It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment. A city only has value because it's occupied by many people, and those people need to express their autonomy and quite literally "leave their mark."

Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia. Just as I scrawled onto a bathroom stall in 2005 "Cameron takes it up the bum," so too did Salvius write of his friend on a wall in the House of the Citharist in the year 79, "Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this."

ZpJuUuNaQ5 123 days ago | | |

>It's a very common form of countercultural resistance and therefore an important relief valve. It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment.

So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly? It's like saying that defecating on the street is a form of self-expression and "leaving their mark". Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?

>Not to mention, it's lovely to be connected to a common thread of humanity over literal millenia.

There is nothing lovely about seeing all this garbage littering the walls of public buildings and historical finds do not justify this behaviour.

ryandrake 123 days ago | | |

> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.

I think this is the heart of it, and where cities and suburban towns differ.

It's admittedly very hard to articulate in words. The walls of buildings in a city are part of the greater, broader, "face of the city." They are in a sense both part of a general "public space" yet also still privately owned. The walls of single family homes in suburban neighborhoods don't really compare. There's much more of a shared sense of "ours" in a city than there is out in the country, where everything's fenced off in little discrete boxes of land, each with someone's name on it. This greater sense of shared agency over the aesthetic of the broader "city" makes street art more justifiable there than it is in single family home places.

throwaway2037 123 days ago | | |

    > therefore an important relief valve

Until it is done to your small business or home, then it is no longer an "important relief valve". The solution to reducing graffiti is multi-part. Here are a few ideas: (1) Pass a state law to restrict the sale of spray paint -- you need a special license to buy it. (2) Pass a local law to reward citizens who provide evidence of taggers (video, photos, etc.). If the city can convict, you are rewarded. Make the reward large enough (1000+ USD?) to be strongly encouraging. (3) Create public spaces where people are allowed to spay paint. This is a little bit like skate parks.

big_toast 122 days ago | | |

I think I used to believe something like this. But I spent two decades living in this context and changed my mind.

There can be beautiful and effective expressions of culture and resistance that don’t tear down the commons people are trying to build together. And it’s hard to ask people to take care of the commons when other people aren’t. Instead we cede management of shared space to private enterprise (malls and gyms and retail as entertainment because your parks are torn up).

specialist 122 days ago | | |

Agree with all.

> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.

My understanding has been (some fraction of) taggers are disaffected. So I could buy that some are reasserting ownership.

Some are just dumb teenagers acting out (shitposting), like my son did.

A handful are pretty good artists. Like some of the kids in my kid's extended social group. Worthy of resources and media. eg Commissions for murals.

BryantD 123 days ago | | |

If you're a cinema person, I strongly recommend Agnes Varda's documentary on LA street art at the end of the 1970s, Mur Murs. (That's a pun: murals as an expression of the murmurs of the community.) It takes graffiti as an expression of ownership as the central thesis and I found it really lovely. Thanks for this comment.

akomtu 123 days ago | | |

I suspect it's not the population's expression of ownership, but simply gangs marking their territory.

baud147258 122 days ago | | |

> It's a way for anyone to express themselves on their environment

no, just a way for a minority to trash public infrastructure because they're assholes

nurettin 123 days ago | | |

They should work as plate cleaners and civil park workers 100 hours a month. That will teach those entitled teens to leave their mark while autonomously cleaning those plates and planting flowers.

woodpanel 123 days ago | | |

> Graffiti is a population's expression of ownership of their city.

Is of course what art-students, pol-sci and social-sciences majors construct out of it because it fits their narratives. Never mind that the scratching of some roman soldier in a brothel's restroom has nothing to do at all with the NYC-born graffti culture. This top-to-bottom social astro-turfing would be just laughable grandstanding if it didn't result in real consequences for less affluent kids: crime, drugs, and deadly injuries as well as filing for bankrupcy at an age where Mrs. cultural-capital has acquired her prestigous arts degree.

socalgal2 123 days ago | |

Tons of people unfortunately see this as ok. My response to them is always "let me tag your car, your house, your laptop" and if you complain you're a hypocrite

I like "Street Art" where permission has been given. I don't like tagging and property destruction. Maybe when I get a little older I'll find some graffiti exhibit at a museum and go tag it.

tristor 123 days ago | |

I really enjoy graffiti murals, and I go out of my way to photograph them in my own city and when I travel. I will see them when I driving or walking around and stop to look for a moment and try to understand the perspective and message of the artist and take a picture if I can.

That said, I don't much like tagging, tagging is generally not art in my opinion even if you can say artist styles are used within it. Tagging is all about ego and selfishness, it's there purely for the sake of saying "I was here", as if you are the most important person in the city that you should claim to put your name on that wall.

I've met quite a few graffiti artists all over the world in my travels, and the people who tag and the people who paint murals are by and large /not/ the same people. The folks who paint murals are trying to say something, the folks who tag have nothing more to say than to try to create a monument of some kind to themselves. I don't respect taggers, I do respect muralists.

zahlman 123 days ago | |

I consider corporal punishment inherently barbaric. An appropriate fine or short stay in jail ought not be life-ruining.

Also, I think there are other effective approaches in some circumstances. People (including "the kids"), locally (Toronto) and other places I've heard of, have been paid (not a super common thing, but it happens) to do actual artwork. There's a mural I consider quite well done, not too far from my place, that isn't getting defaced even though it's in a place where I would otherwise ordinarily expect strong temptation to "tagging" and other graffiti.

jjmarr 123 days ago | | |

I've heard real estate people call this legalized extortion, since you have to select a graffiti artist with enough reputation that others don't mess with the piece.

s_dev 123 days ago | |

I think there is a lot of nuance here. Just as councils and developers can construct ugly buildings artists can also add ugly work to walls.

I agree there is a spectrum. On one hand you've Banksy or Basquiat adding to a flat grey wall and creating art that has a political voice or some artistic merit and the other you've some twat scribbling hate symbols on a historic monument. I don't have on ideas on how we can ensure one and not the other though.

dkarl 123 days ago | | |

It sounds like you're saying the only thing ugly about tagging is when it contains objectionable political content. That's not really responding to the complaint here, which is that the vast majority of it is low effort, low quality tagging that makes things aesthetically uglier. It's easy to go out with a collector's eye, cherry-pick the good stuff, and put together a slideshow that makes it look like a public amenity, but that ignores the overall effect of wall after building after block of proof of Sturgeon's Law.

Is it ignorable? Does all the terrible stuff just disappear into the background, or should we care about how it affects the experiences of people who have to live with it and walk past it every day? I think that's the question people are arguing.

woodpanel 123 days ago | |

> You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop.

Oh yes, you want to (with an asterisk). As a former Graffiti writer myself I can speak from experience that the judge will be the first person in those kids life taking their actions seriously, giving them any sort of guidance.

Better spend a couple of hours per month doing social work than letting them slip further away until no softer juvenile criminal code is there to protect them.

mahrain 123 days ago | |

One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?

threethirtytwo 123 days ago | | |

Also culture. There’s just no culture of it.

brador 123 days ago | | |

It’s explained by punishment.

mmooss 123 days ago | |

To include the obvious in this discussion, it's your opinion that street art / graffiti makes things ugly; others feel differently. I think it brings places alive, brings human expression into the otherwise highly controlled environment. There's a spirit to it, and I love to see kids who have no voice take the step of speaking up. I love to see it, generally. To me it's a sign of freedom and very democratic.

As for it's quality as art, I don't buy that's a purely subjective, arbitrary opinion (meaning, I think it's reasonable to use some judgment). But people still differ greatly: look at their responses to abstract expressionism, for example; some people think it's trash, others pay tens of millions.

There is plenty of ugly in cities: There is a lot of ugly architecture; buildings are much more visually prominent and for aesthetics I would remove the ugly ones much sooner than removing the street art. There is ugly advertising and marketing; there are ugly industrial sites on beautiful waterfronts and in neighborhoods.

Should those be subject to the same judgement as some kids expressing themselves? The people who make the buildings, ads, sites have far more power and resources, including enough to make those beautiful. They seem much more responsible for the results than the kids, who may have nothing else.

lostdog 123 days ago | | |

Please post your address. I'd like to help make your home "feel alive."

secretsatan 123 days ago | |

I think mostly here in switzerland, it’s tolerated in certain areas, and even directly sponsored, in Lausanne, nearly every pedestrian underpass is completely covered in pretty good work, every bit of street furniture has unique designs that seem to be left alone by taggers, areas that might otherwise be run down are covered in colourful murals that are regularly refreshed, i think this is the right approach.

gtowey 123 days ago | |

My theory is that graffiti is tied to the feeling of lack of agency in one's life. Everyone wants to "make their mark on the world". Some of us get to do that with an interesting career, building a family, getting involved in the community. If you feel excluded from all that, like those things are beyond your reach, you might resort to things like graffiti. IMO it's something that says "I exist, and I can change things around me" for those who don't have a better way to do that.

Based on that we "fix" the problem by making sure that everyone has a chance to make a fulfilling life for themselves. Better & freer education; Healthcare; cost of living & wage support. Etc.

zdragnar 123 days ago | | |

That's what therapy is for, not spray paint.

dfxm12 123 days ago | |

If you want to dissuade illegal graffiti, give people legal walls.

thegrim000 123 days ago | | |

As if there's no creative avenues available for people to express themselves other than spray painting people's property ..

AngryData 123 days ago | |

Are there places people can legally grafitti there? In a number of small towns there are unofficial grafitti rocks or walls in public view that redirects a lot of peoples mischief and desire to display public art. Nobody is in any actual trouble if they are caught painting it although you will lose your paint.

It might not be a total solution, but it could have a significant impact on grafitti other places.

jorts 123 days ago | | |

There's Clarion Alley in the heart of the Mission, which I think is open to graffiti, as everything is plastered with it, most of it looking really nice. You can see it on Street View.

moron4hire 122 days ago | |

I understand what you're saying but harsh punishment doesn't really work, they just increase the stakes of the crime and lead to more desperate behavior to avoid getting caught rather than less occurrence of the crime itself. Pretty much the only effective form of crime deterrent is economic development, i.e. give people something else to do.

squokko 123 days ago | |

You jail 100 and the thousands stop doing it.

cypherg 122 days ago | |

an invader mosiac is not graffiti, it's street art, which is more or less the mortal enemy of graff. I'm not even trolling when I say people with attitudes like yours are what legit motivate so many graff writers out there.

rimbo789 123 days ago | |

I like graffiti - even random tags over blank walls because it’s a sign people are truly living and breathing in a space.

As long as there have been walls there has been graffiti. Spaces without graffiti are artificial and antiseptic.

bigDinosaur 123 days ago | | |

Graffiti on things like trees (e.g. in urban parks) is awful and trees are the opposite of artificial and antiseptic. The main problem with graffiti is that most of it is made without thought or consideration, and that never ends well.

InMice 123 days ago | | |

I like that part of it too - but feel that if I owned a building and had people spraying paint all over its exterior whenever they felt like it...maybe not so much.

socalgal2 123 days ago | | |

Tell me your address so I can come tag your car or your windows or your laptop

Graffiti is property destruction, pure and simple. I'm happy to come destroy your property. Complain and you're a hypocrite

secretsatan 123 days ago | |

Oh, i just saw the 20 lashes thing, rather have graffiti than fascists

toephu2 123 days ago |

For a small business owner, graffiti is an unconsented, recurring tax that provides zero ROI for the neighborhood. In SF if you own a business that gets tagged, you have X number of days to clean it up yourself otherwise YOU get fined.. the city does nothing to go after the criminals. They only go after law-abiding tax paying citizens cause that's where the money is.

voidUpdate 123 days ago |

The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art

rib3ye 123 days ago | |

If a graffiti artist believed shitting on a lawn was art, they would, but they don't.

The problem and solution are similar to OSS:

The problem: the artists have something to say, they want as many people as possible to see it and use it.

The solution: make it free, and put it where as many people as possible can access it.

Yes, I just compared graffiti to github.

voidUpdate 123 days ago | | |

If there were community areas that were designed for painting, that would be totally fine by me. A big wall that is painted white, maybe with some ladders nearby if that doesn't violate health and safety rules, and tell people to go nuts. Though you would potentially get a lot of disagreeable content, but I suspect that they would quickly get overwritten anyway

Ylpertnodi 123 days ago | |

> You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art.

Are you referring to 'tagging' (putting your, or your gang name on something)?

I agree.

Referring to well-crafted, or political (think banksy), images, i agree less. Unless i don't like the image/style then it's only lawn-worthy.

socalgal2 123 days ago | | |

I don't agree with the political graffiti either. See imgur as where this leads. imgur used to be interesting images. Now it's 90% images of text as political statements. The site is effectively ruined.

voidUpdate 123 days ago | | |

I do mostly dislike tagging, but even if you paint Starry Night on someone else's wall, that's still vandalism

greeniskool 123 days ago |

Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased

pimlottc 123 days ago | |

There are terms within the scene - tag, throwie, piece, burner - but they are not generally known by the wider public.

https://www.kmuw.org/beautiful-city/2014-08-04/what-were-tal...

https://www.instagram.com/p/COrxyrCMkOx/

kingkawn 123 days ago | |

English does, and definitely invented it before the rest of the world caught on to this culture. Try watching “Wild Style” from 1983, documenting some of the earliest beefs between the types of graffiti artists. Portuguese speakers did not invent this distinction.

Throw ups are the quick ones and Pieces are the long ones.

rconti 123 days ago | |

Graffiti is the catch-all, but "street art" vs "tagging" have pretty clearly distinct meaning.

garbawarb 123 days ago | |

Is "street art" not the name? Like how "comics" are low but "graphic novels" are respectable.

s_dev 123 days ago |

Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.

I submit Irish Graffiti I see here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Graifiti/

Though I think displaying these things as a map is more useful: https://streetartcities.com/cities/sanfrancisco

There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.

I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.

Gigachad 123 days ago | |

I'm probably the minority where I don't mind any graffiti, quality or not. As long as it isn't horribly offensive or impacting the functionality of something (over signs/glass/etc). Think I just prefer the look of a wall covered in even shitty tags and pasted posters over a completely blank slate.

I particularly love seeing peoples stickers about.

kromokromo 122 days ago | | |

I agree. It feels like people are actually living there, in contrast to sterile, corporate glass/concrete.

walthamstow 123 days ago |

As an aside, the Financial Times (yes, that one) did a great interview a couple of years ago with prolific London graff artist 10FOOT.

The comments were predictably howling with rage and injustice ("he's a criminal!!", says employee of cartel laundry HSBC), but I enjoyed it a lot.

https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-b7d9-4c16-b1c2-71def32cc...

xnorswap 123 days ago | |

He is indeed incredibly prolific, anyone taking a train around london will recognise 10FOOT.

But he is not an artist, he literally just tags 10Foot in what could be described as looking like it was done with a marker pen.

something like this is very typical: https://ldngraffiti.co.uk/graffiti/writers/flash?pic=152931&...

I enjoy good graffiti, but 10FOOT does not fall into that category.

walthamstow 123 days ago | | |

Your link describes him as an author or writer, which is a kind of artist I guess. I'm not bothered about the nomenclature.

rib3ye 123 days ago |

I’m the early 2000s I worked as an assistant producer on a San Francisco graffiti documentary featuring several of these artists

https://youtu.be/7Ub8uRFzUCQ

brcmthrowaway 123 days ago | |

Why did you leave San Francisco?

rib3ye 123 days ago | | |

I didn't.

mergy 123 days ago |

Lasercats that was briefly on the old theatre on Divisadero remains a favorite. This was like 15 years ago.

https://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/xndqw-full.jpg

gabrieledarrigo 123 days ago |

Old time graffiti writer here.

There's nothing so wild, anarchic and energetic than painting illegally on some surface without any permission.

fox4587 123 days ago | |

Did you see the fish on pavement? Looks like it took great skill to get the shadows right. I've got goosebumps looking at them!: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/138...

It's unfortunate that the city threatens to fine the owner of the property: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/138...

jakobnissen 122 days ago | |

Sure there is. You can go around beating random people op. Really gets your juices flowing!

I mean, since we’re apparently endorsing crime now.

InMice 123 days ago |

Cool, but why lay out the images in such an annoying way? Whatever happened to simple, functional photo galleries? I miss them.

guerrilla 123 days ago | |

It works great on mobile. That's more than I can say for most things.

InMice 123 days ago | | |

Turn your phone to landscape, does it sitll work for you? Or are you stuck viewing only the top half of the images and unable to scroll down.

Side scrolling in portrait is not my opinion of working great. It does work to view them at least. Youre trapped in a vertical scroll, no way to get back to the beginning but scroll all the way back.

Jon_Lowtek 123 days ago | |

on desktop i had to click on the small black area between two pictures before scrolling with left/right arrows became possible ... very bad UX

w10-1 123 days ago |

It's nice, and a lot of work, to gather this from the city. Many thanks!

But because it's just a stream, the only interaction is to browse, which can be mind-numbing.

It would be interesting to sort by image vector, to find tags from the same person, to locate them on a map, to mark and share favorites, etc.

Graffiti raises a host of social issues; features that concretize that could be helpful.

senfiaj 123 days ago |

I wish there were more of this: https://stfu.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/sf-graffiti/696...

boblawbomb 123 days ago |

generally speaking- it is frowned upon by people in graffiti communities to tag peoples homes, cars, private property etc. This doesn't really cover "mom and pop" business'. Not justifying it per se, Although I am more on the favorable side of graffiti.

ghuroo1 123 days ago |

I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)

comrade1234 123 days ago |

We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.

bigstrat2003 123 days ago | |

Well yeah, of course they do. Contrary to what what some in this thread are claiming, the modal graffiti isn't self expression or a yearning for freedom. It's tweaking people's noses by altering the property without permission. You can't do that on a designated spray area, so those people have to go into the neighborhoods to get their jollies by pissing people off.

deadfall23 123 days ago |

I did a similar pet project about 12 years ago called Graffiti City. It was very simple map that displays pins where reported cases of destruction of property with paint, aka graffiti art, throughout the city of San Francisco. This uses public data available at data.sfgov.org.

defrost 123 days ago |

As a suggestion,

* Orientation - some images are sideways,

* Option to walk through by date order, and by location ...

There is an audience for the time ordered flux of images on particular sites (at least in Australia).

wumms 123 days ago |

Would have looked further, but scroll wheel finger cramped. Keyboard nav would be great.

kg 123 days ago | |

Enabling the browser's scrollbar would also be good.

roughly 123 days ago |

There was an article that came through here a little while ago describing the process by which commercial property owners and banks collude to keep storefronts boarded up and vacant because otherwise they’d have to adjust the loan terms or take a loss somewhere, but sure, go off about how the graffiti artists tagging the boarded up windows are the ones making the city ugly.

y-curious 123 days ago | |

It’s all Banksy and “wall art” til you get an ugly stick figure drawing sprayed on your storefront/door. Also commercial property owners doing bad stuff and vandalism are not mutually exclusive bad things

thegrim000 123 days ago |

A thought experiment I like is to image a city of the future. Imagine we get our shit together and survive another 1,000, heck, 100,000 years. Close your eyes and imagine our most advanced cities, 100,000 years in the future. What does it look like? Do you see graffiti in your vision? I definitely don't see it in mine.

mothballed 123 days ago | |

I see machines/AI doing almost all the production and heavy lifting. Most urban streets have a brothel, a bar (not necessarily alcohol), a couple art/cultural clubs, something for repairing/dealing with transport. No one pays much mind to the physical view of the street because they're communicating/experiencing most of it through augmented reality of some manner.

thoughtpeddler 123 days ago |

> "Just because I'm smiling, doesn't mean I'm happy" -TrustyScribe

I love street art.

jameslk 123 days ago |

I wish I could say this evoked a nostalgic feeling, but having lived in SF, the literal memory that came to mind immediately seeing these is the repulsive smell of urine and the sight of dirty, trash-laden sidewalks. While graffiti itself could be viewed as artistic expression on its own, I liked looking at some of it, in my mind it seems so often correlated with decay

asveikau 123 days ago |

I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here. Some of these are crude or ugly (and I'm aware that this is subjective), but a few of these are really good and don't deserve a citation. Meanwhile this thread is SCANDALIZED that there is GRAFFITI (clutch your pearls!). It really goes to show the ongoing slide into total conformity that is the tech industry. I remember when tech had more of a nonconformist, countercultural bent, but it has been dying for quite a few years.

throwforfeds 123 days ago | |

I'm surprised and also not. We're a long ways away from 90s hacker culture, and even then there were plenty of upper class kids that were just in it for good pay working for the giant tech corps. We like to romanticize everyone dropping acid and being part of the counter culture, myself included, but reality is different.

The saddest part to me is that the aesthetic of street art has been totally consumed by major corporations and spit back out on to the streets here in Brooklyn. I laugh to myself whenever I walk by a tourist taking a selfie in front of some mural that is really just some brand advertisement.

browsingonly 123 days ago | |

I don't know anyone in tech who enjoyed watching gangs mark their territory with tags in their neighborhood.

asveikau 123 days ago | | |

Sometime in the last 30 years I realized the "gang territory marking" thing is mostly made up and basically not to take anyone seriously when they say this.

Cornbilly 123 days ago | |

>I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here.

I'm not. HN trends toward the most suburban conformist mindset possible.

yatopifo 122 days ago | |

Tagging is both crude and ugly, and this is not a subjective opinion.

JKCalhoun 123 days ago |

Some of these are great.

I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.

If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)

thot_experiment 122 days ago |

Great to see some of my friends work up here. It's nice to be reminded of why I love this city so much.

molsongolden 123 days ago |

Scraping these from the city violations DB was a cool idea.

mlmonkey 123 days ago |

Just drive north on 19th Ave, between, say, Brotherhood Way and Sloat, and look at the fencing on your right. Keeps getting filled with grafitti.

woodpanel 123 days ago |

I like that the pictures are taken by government employees instead of the graffiti writers themselves nor by fans of graffiti.

Because of that the pictured artworks look much less nice, and the images can capture what 99% of the artworks actually provide to their surroundings: dismay, disregard, and a constant reminder that urban anonymity is a moloch that you can enjoy watching from a coffee shop’s window, while it pisses in a baby stroller.

themark 123 days ago |

I scrolled pretty far and didnt see Borf in there. Was that Web 2.0 ?

threethirtytwo 123 days ago |

Beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.

For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.

direwolf20 123 days ago | |

If they're not covering windows, signs or art, what is being vandalized? A blank slab of concrete performs its function equally well no matter the color.

toephu2 123 days ago | | |

A 'blank slab of concrete' isn't just a structural element; it’s a signal of stewardship. When you ignore tagging on that slab, you create a permission structure for more intrusive vandalism. It’s the 'Broken Windows' theory in practice: tagging leads to broken glass, which leads to copper theft, because the physical environment signals that the space is unmonitored and ownership is absent.

High-trust societies rely on the shared maintenance of the commons. If the community can't even agree to keep a wall clean, it’s a leading indicator that the city has lost the ability to enforce the social contract on larger issues.

Sadly this is partly why SF will never be a high-trust society.

toephu2 123 days ago | | |

Most graffiti is just tagging, scribbling their name on something. I do not consider this art. It makes the environment you live in lease appealing (looks more ghetto).

threethirtytwo 123 days ago | | |

Bro a lot of these aren’t beautiful quotes. Gang signs, immature shit from kids who do most of this stuff. Some is beautiful art most someone just signed their name.

mvellandi 123 days ago |

This collection is a bit ordinary and unremarkable. There are many great large format, new/used print books on street art

tieze 123 days ago | |

That is arguably the point. They are taken from the SF city website and are placed in arbitrary order. I personally love this unfiltered take.

There's more to get from these than just aesthetics, precisely because they're not curated.

project2501a 123 days ago |

no "fuck /u/spez". I'm disappoint.

cypherg 122 days ago |

the sheer lack of knowledge of the graff scene on HN isn't surprising in any way but wow there are so many idiotic hot takes in this thread hahaha. I've been writing graff for over 20 years - it's something the average civilian mind could never comprehend. Graffiti has existed almost since the beginning of civilization; it's primal, it's raw. Doing graff is one of the most human activities one could partake in. It's also one of the most pure art forms to be conceived. All of that is true and most graff writers are horribly toxic and terrible humans (most but certainly not all).

zombot 122 days ago |

> city inspectors documenting graffiti violations

Because grey fucking concrete walls are so much better than colorful entertainment.

metalman 123 days ago |

If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal.

It's ok

direwolf20 123 days ago | |

It is illegal. It gives the population the idea they have the right to alter their environment, and that's dangerous.

readthenotes1 123 days ago | | |

Alter other people's property.

Agreed, that is a dangerous concept