The cool thing about spending hours after school at my old babysitter’s was that she lived close to the railroad tracks in Humboldt. Other kids and I would often check out the graffiti that someone had painted on trains. The trains came from who knows were in the country, but people in that area were pretty apt with a spray can. I remember graffiti artists painted vivid colors, perfect shapes, and innovative designs on the side of the trains. The extreme talent they showed made graffiti seem cool to me.

Apparently those graf artists didn’t reside in Philadelphia. It’s not about showing off your abilities around here. It’s instead just tagging; it looks like crap. Look around Philadelphia and you’ll hardly see any graffiti painted by anyone with talent. Instead walls are just an endless lackluster mural people’s initials and possibly the crown for the Latin Kings gang.

I really don’t get it. Did some PR rep for the Kings come up with this dumb idea for exposure? Am I supposed to give them more credibility because they’ve tagged walls and other objects all over the city? It’s not working. I’m no more afraid of them. Still a minor threat in my book. And nobody’s counting the number of crowns like in GTA San Andreas.

Then there’s people who find a line and tag everything in sight with their initials. One guy tagged his initials on a line of bus stops near my office all the way into the subway station. Wow. You can paint three letters over an over. Am I supposed to be impressed? Am I supposed to be scared of you now? Does this make you a hardened thug that I’m going to run from at first sight?

No. And how would I know it’s you when I see you? I can’t tell who the hell you are from three letters, especially when a significant portion of the world has those same initials, you idiot.

This has really ruined my appreciation of graffiti. Where did the artists go? The only thing I’ve seen close to actual artistic graffiti in Philly has been ads for Colt 45 and Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Philadelphia residents want them taken down.

Graffiti in Lawrence isn’t much better. All that you see is stencils painted by whiny activist groups that don’t have the guts to present their ideas in person.

Sad that the art died. Where brilliantly detailed artists used to show off their skills on the side of trains, now every random punk is etching his initials with a key on the window of a subway car.