— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
So someone completely destroyed the mural on 17th street between Alabama and Florida over the weekend. The mural was just over 7 years old, and was made by local artists.
While walking by today I took a quick series of the damage with my cell phone. I quickly pasted them together to give a sense of the damage. It’s pretty unreal. […]
I think the reason this makes me so upset is twofold: 1) I know several of the artists. 2) There is a huge blank white wall just across the street. Dude(s), tag that instead of the mural.That is all.
I'll spare you the usual “good vs. bad graffiti” debate, as I'm pretty sure we have our minds made up about that. Instead, here's a couple of shots of the mural, as seen in better days:
Comments (11)
Dang. It’s anecdotal, but it seems to me like tagging of murals is way up lately. The conventional wisdom used to be that graffiti artists would respect attractive (or at least community-oriented) murals, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Quite apart from everything else, can anyone tell me what the graffiti says?? It makes me feel so old that I can never decipher the destruction when it appears on beautiful murals…
I hope san francisco dies in a car crash.
It’s all art bro.
Wow. Sucks that the tagger scumbags had to destroy actual art. Jealousy is a bitch, I guess.
I hope they didn’t damage the cool umbrella piece that is strung overhead….that would be a shame. Looking forward to the new creative rebirth of this prime art fence…the tagging is already tired and lacks general creativity, but hey, I bet it felt good at the time.
Sadly the “watermelon” mural is irreplaceable…the artist, Pico Sanchez, sadly past away a little over a year ago.
I’ve seen the first and last two on several other murals in the neighborhood - with the same minimal approach to style or artistic pretense. The middle two (JAST and SHAX?) look like they might not have gone up at the same time and are new to me.
If I remember you can see the same tags (though these aren’t strictly tags) in the Clarion Alley squabble from a while ago and I think I’ve seen them on the murals around the torn up playground and in the alley between the parking lot and the mini-mall. They clearly have an issue with murals - though I can’t fathom why.
Sadly, taggers have as much respect for their communities as those same people that walk along the street, unwrap anything they happen to have and drop their trash on the ground, rather than in the receptacle that can be found practically every ten feet or so, or the people who flick their cigarette butts on the street, or piss on buildings. Even graffitti ‘artists’ have the same disrepect, to some degree, unless they’ve somehow gained permission.
There are people who live in these neighborhoods, embracing the ‘grittiness’ or ‘eclectic nature’ of their surroundings, but those are simply euphemisms for trashed, tagged, or pissed upon.
But of course, blame gentrification for ruining these selfsame neighborhoods.
Anyone happen to have any info regarding the Asshole who tags (CHERT BKF) ?? The desrepectful fucker tagged all over my termanlly ill fathers house recently ,When DAD saw it he got so worked i ended up had to take him to the E.R and having an overnight stay at hospital. IF anyone can provide me with any information that leads me to getting my hands on this little bastard please let me kno .It would b Much appreciated and any info that puts me in direct contact with CHERT will be rewarded. THANX
JAST!