Said Stefano Bloch, "a cultural geographer, a professor at the University of Arizona and a former graffiti artist," quoted in "Multiple Floors of Los Angeles Skyscrapers Are Covered in Graffiti/The graffiti has brought attention to the empty buildings, which have been abandoned since 2019 and are across from the venue where the Grammy Awards will be hosted on Sunday" (NYT).
Human activity flows into unused spaces. It's the story of civilization. But is that unlinked to gangs? Don't gangs come into existence where there is emptiness in the social order?
Nature abhors a vacuum.
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66 comments:
Don't gangs come into existence where there is emptiness in the social order
…where there is the perception of emptiness in the social order. The kind of people who see people going about living thier lives and think to themselves What these people need is my leadership
Why are there empty skyscrapers in Los Angeles? aliens may ask themselves…
Why do people have to continue to be stupid in the same old ways?
Rudi Giuliani proved that ridding the city, particularly the subway system, of graffiti, was crucial to ending the crime epidemic of the crack era in NYC. Yes, graffiti is connected to crime. It’s a display of gang turf control that emboldens criminals to prey on the law abiding.
Democrats have systematically dismantled the policing methods that Giuliani employed to clean up the city and take the streets back from the gangs. Why are Democrat’s sympathies with the gangs, and not some ordinary Joe who has to ride the subway to work?
Trespassing onto other peoples property shall be overlooked. Not a "REAL" crime.
Because shut-up.
Private Property rights is a cultural bedrock of the Success of the United States. While constitutionally and statutorily protected, the communist left works incessantly to erode those rights. Laws are a balance between chaos of survival of the fittest, and the paring of freedoms. Mess with that balance, and things will only devolve.
Its a little paint, its pretty, whats the problem? I mean besides violating the law? But hey, if graffiti breaks the social contract, no big deal. But those bodega owners? They have lots of money, I don't have to pay for bread, or diapers, as long as I'm already there, some beer and whiskey are staples, some cigarettes, and its only money and I NEED money, so Ill help myself to the cash register contents, sorry about the concussion I gave you, but I asked nice once, right? I did ask.
And that cop deserved a knife in the belly, He could see all I had was bread and diapers. Besides, whys the graffiti guy get a pass, but you insist on picking on me? Its all racist anyway, so I'm owed this little indiscretion.
Gosh that building over there is pretty, uh?
Wait. There is a homeless problem in LA, and there are unfinished, unused high rise apartment dwellings? Sometimes I wonder about California’s Democrat politicians (and the rest of the time I don’t wonder at all — I know)
“Not connected to violence” my ass. This statement is not true even if you exclude tagging, posting gang acronyms and nicknames, from your definition of graffiti. You would be wise to either learn to read the local gang code or choose an untouched wall and avoid any lettering if you’re an aspiring graffitiest. Especially in downtown Los Angeles.
However if you proceed in spite of the above advice be aware that if someone interrupts your work to ask where you are from drop your shit and head for safer places. That person is not trying to strike up a conversation.
What would you expect a former graffiti artist to say?
As if there is such a thing. He is merely a vandal, appropriating others' property for his own selfish ends.
This arrested development seems like a fair representation of California's inability to deal with its problems. How can more than a billion dollars of residential development in the heart of a great city, started six years ago, be uncompleted and unused? Do they not have a housing shortage in LA? Can we not agree that abandoning a project like this, for that long, should allow a forced sale to someone else?
This cries out for a legislative fix. Sure, nobody knows who owes what to whom, but certainly a completed project would create a pool of wealth that the debtors and creditors could fight about for years, while the real estate serves its intended purpose for housing and commercial activities.
What an embarrassment for the city and the state!
I am fine with this, provided the families of the graffiti artists can’t sue the buildings when the artists fall off. Also: no moral rights attach to their work.
Years ago I saw a documentary about graffiti.
Regarding the notorious 1970s graffiti on NYC subway trains, some guy said he and his friends did it merely to spot their logos on the trains as they went by. It wasn't political, it wasn't gangs. It was selfish people who inadvertently gave NYC a terrible reputation and costs millions to clean year after year.
Some other guy had sprayed on hundreds of places to build his reputation in his community, but he wasn't political either. Just another egocentric jerk.
Of course a Roman Empire European tribe, the Vandals, were responsible for the term vandalism. There is nothing new under the sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals
The 1980s Vandals punk band is known for the album "Peace thru Vandalism"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vandals
they understand that graffiti is not connected to violence
Shouldn't that be: they understand that graffiti is not ALWAYS connected to violence
“This is people taking it upon themselves to use a space that in many ways was abandoned by people with money and power,” said Mr. Bloch...
"...the project was halted in 2019 after the developer, Oceanwide Holdings, ran out of money..."
Sounds like the space was abandoned by people 'without' money.
Graffiti can be beautiful, though most is not. Most is an ugly sign of decay and, while the graffiti artist may not be a gang member, graffiti is a sign of lawlessness. The more of it you see, the less safe you are.
"I found some people who were not associated with gangs who did graffiti, therefore graffiti is not associated with gangs!"
Sloppy thinking is rampant in the media. It's on purpose.
"some guy said **he and his friends** did it merely to spot their logos on the trains as they went by... [sotto voice] rather than admit to criminal activity."
In the immortal words of Columbo, as he turns around just as he's going out the door, "Just one more question, sir, one thing that's been bothering me... Isn't 'some guy and his friends' another way to describe a gang? What else do they do together? Play poker on Thursday nights? Get together with their wives and watch football games with chips and dip on Sundays?"
Critical thinking is a lost art.
People are going to welcome gangs who demand only a share of the til to keep the organized shoplifting, etc, at bay, and no rights will be read, BTW. Of course Amazon as competition, and eBay as a fence for stolen goods, have already done far more damage to small businesses than street crime ever will.
Or, Todd, "they understand that graffiti is not NECESSARILY connected to violence."
But the statement as given is false, for sure.
It's the other way around. A vacuum loves nature. Just see how all the commentators are drawn to the vacuous posts like hairballs to a Hoover.
To the greater point, sure there's violence and ugliness related to graffiti. Yet there's culture and beauty. We happen to find ourselves in the bullshit universe where everything is a double edged sword and requires the acceptance of cognitive dissonance to maintain an even strain.
It is much easier to destroy things than to create them. That sounds trite, but too many on the left don't understand that once you tear our world apart it will be terribly hard to restore. Rural Americans seem to understand that, while a significant subset of urban Americans don't.
hispanic gangs have received Over 6 million new members, just in the Biden residency.
We NEED to accept the fact, that hispanic gangbangers are Now running the show.
No Border!
No Wall!
No USA, AT ALL!!
"This is people taking it upon themselves to use a space that in many ways was abandoned by people with money and power."
Another demonstration of what happens when a sovereign* Government tinkers with free market forces.
Reading today:
.."Biden Makes Coal Great Again As Exports Soar To India"
.."Bank Of America Is Breaking Its Promise To Not Finance New Coal Projects"
.."Essentially, [GDP is measuring] the pace at which we’re going Soviet, replacing private wealth with government waste..."
Most folks who interact with Government begin to notice
..a mindset "everything not mandatory is prohibited;"
..things flip between mandatory and prohibited, or reverse, at the whim of some unaccountable person.
========
*Has lawful power, alterable only by armed rebellion, to deprive individuals of property, livelihood, liberty, life.
“Nature abhors a vacuum.“
That’s an anti-immigrant statement. I can’t believe Althouse and her right wing NYT could stoop so low. 😆
The most depressing thing about graffiti isn't that it's evidence of criminality but that it's evidence of surrender.
I feel the greater wrong is by the builders who blighted the cityscape with huge unfinished empty structures. That's the decline. The graffiti people experienced the ugliness and hopelessness and did something in weakness and desperation.
I have seen myself a veteran cop explaining to a rookie the meaning of the gang graffiti spray painted on the wall in the alley behind my apartment in Los Angeles. This author is a social dillatente.
Does this guy have a brother that writes about the benefits of feral hogs?
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Journalists abhor an article without the phrase "by people with money and power".
I occasionally leave my mountaintop hamlet for the big city. When I am wandering about the city and stumble across grafitti, my antenna goes up. It's not a sign of safety. In my nearby small town of 10,000, there is a zero grafitti. I am sure that will change when Biden's hoard migrates north. On the bride side, they can pick my apples.
Walking around Brooklyn with my dog who lifts his leg on almost every tree, signpost and litter basket, most of which are already decorated by gang tags. The two marking systems are functionally equivalent but the dog’s are a good deal more classy and benign.
Of all the many forms of ugly American imperialism the one I loathe most is graffiti tags in tiny remote villages around the world.
Althouse.” I feel the greater wrong is by the builders who blighted the cityscape with huge unfinished empty structures”.
So builders set out not to finish their buildings? To ensure their emptiness? The builder clearly ran out of money to finish the building at the moment demand fell insuring the lender was unsympathetic to further funding. The building in question is in an area adjacent to LA Live. A good location.
I recall the Philadelphia Inquirer, back in the 70s, glorifying two of Philly's most notorious graffiti vandals, "Cornbread" and "Earl," complete with full-color photos of the pair, posing with spray cans, in the rotogravure section. I think the creeps at the Inky got a woody at the thought of the "straights" being outraged at such brazen glorification and cared not for the corrosive effect of the vandalism. Full disclosure: My wife grew up in the slums of Kensington so we share a white-hot hatred of graffiti, though from vastly different angles.
I've stayed in Downtown LA a lot over the last 10 years, and they've been building these giant condos for years. Multiples of them. I have no idea who's supposed to be populating them. I understand there's a housing crisis in Southern California but these are not affordable for the average person.
But tagging the whole building where it's visible to everyone going to a Lakers game or out for a night at LA live is hilarious. Hopefully it reminds them that their government is incompetent.
"Nature abhors a vacuum."
Sure. But graffiti is not nature and other people's property not a vacuum.
I feel weak and desperate, and need to display my artistic skills to the world. I can't get into art school and the world has denied me a job as an artist, so would you mind if I spray paint your house? Your apartment or condo bulding? Maybe just your sidewalk? Your trash cans? Your car?
If you object to my spray painting your beautiful home in Madison, what right do you have to say it's OK to spray someone else's property, even if you deem it "ugly and unfinished"?
"Why do people have to continue to be stupid in the same old ways?"
Because people don't change. We're ignorant pack animals living very brief lives in a hazardous world. We act on impulse and in response to the fear or flee response more than we act on thought and analysis. The alpha dogs have to herd their packs into cooperation (or obedience) to ensure the pack works successfully toward the same common objective: survival. (Within each pack, "survival" manifests in various degrees of success among the pack members, including, for the few, accumulation of power and riches).
Among the tools necessary to achieve a cooperative and/or submissive herd is force, yes, but also persuasion, which requires social skills, including charm and dominance, and the ability and willingness to lie to win agreement or compel obedience. These lies become the pack's shared myths, providing an overarching, internalized, and compelling motor of shared belief and motivation within the pack. The net result is a pack of the many who have incomplete or confused or false perceptions of the world around them. Pack leaders may typically know more about the reality of the world, but they, also, inevitably fall victim to the miasma of ignorance, misunderstanding, misconception,lies, and the self-justifying motivating pack myths for which they are authors, caretakers, and, often and inevitably, self-convinced believers. In the end, everyone is stumbling around in degrees of partial knowledge, ignorance and self-delusion.
As the band Sparks sang back in the 1970s, "Everybody's stupid, after all!"
Graffiti is a society's face tattoos and nose rings.
The ideology that claims that our key social problems are not the threefold curses of mental illness, drug habituation, and criminality, but are instead the single problem of homelessness, has caused Los Angeles to willy nilly approve high density housing projects that will do nothing to address the real problems, and certainly won't provide shelter for the "unhoused". Higher capital costs, higher labor costs, and higher material costs have now stopped lots of projects. Many developers who have spent money to get approvals now want to flip their projects for a quick profit. Not so many people want to take on that risk.
And public housing, despite the lovely architectural renderings, will not only cost more than $500K a unit, it will always end up as a locus of squalid criminality.
Graffiti is the least of our problems.
I feel the greater wrong is by the builders who blighted the cityscape with huge unfinished empty structures.
The developers were a publicly-traded Chinese company. According to the LA Times, the lack of funding may be the result of (a) a 2016 change in Chinese policies restricting the flow of money out of the China, and/or (b) an FBI corruption probe at City Hall that is investigating possible kickbacks and other crimes that might involve foreign real estate developers with downtown building projects.
So Chinese + Dems = shithole.
In the 1990s I lived in Baltimore. The gangs controlling the drug distribution in town were being replaced, quite violently, by new gangs, over several years during that decade. To say the link between grafitti and gangs was merely a "moral panic" ignores the rate of over 1 murder per day that gangs maintained there. (And let us not forget the much higher rates of wounding by gunshot, because Bawlmer had excellent trauma ERs near the slums.)
Gang tags on street corners meant life or death to a large number of people in the 1990s, and trespassing on the wrong corner in the wrong neighborhood could result in immediate criminal violence.
So sure, pretty pictures spraypainted in public places aren't linked to violence, except perhaps if the owner catches the artists, but the 1990s were quite deadly over gang grafitti.
I'm not exactly seeing the weakness and desperation here, Althouse. Quite the opposite, in fact. The act screams "look at what WE can do and YOU can't stop us!" Indeed, asserting dominance is an acknowledged purpose of Graffiti. Ct
The unfinished building didn't look too bad. Certainly much better than an unfinished building covered with graffiti.
Zavier Onasses said...
"This is people taking it upon themselves to use a space that in many ways was abandoned by people with money and power."
"Another demonstration of what happens when a sovereign* Government tinkers with free market forces."
That. Right there.
The owners didn't think enough of their property to provide protection against such things. Using the space to house the homeless will just accelerate the deterioration.
Althouse
Somewhere in that graphic mess is another Banksy, perhaps. Like the hand prints in the caves of France it is modern mans declaration, "I was here.". Only not as permanent.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
That's why I named my dog "Nature."
On the rare occasion I have to wait for a freight train to pass before continuing, a very high percentage of the cars are either tagged or obviously painted recently due to the rampant tagging of train equipment. I can't remember the last time I saw something, regardless of how well-done it was executed as "art", that wasn't gang-related.
"Yes, graffiti is connected to crime."
Of course: putting up the graffiti is itself a criminal act.
"It’s a display of gang turf control that emboldens criminals to prey on the law abiding."
I call bullshit.
Mostly, graffiti was the product of young non-gang affiliated men, who wanted to express themselves creatively in their urban environment with the tools at hand. Many of them developed great skill, some producing startling and memorable works of urban art. Next, there were the less-motivated, less-skilled dilettantes, wannabes who produced only clumsy, failed imitations of the good stuff. And, last, perhaps, was actual gang-tagging. But, if they were marking their territory, they were, by definition, only tagging in their neighborhoods, (typically a very few blocks). Aside from those unfortunate enough to live in gang neighborhoods, the larger city population did not commonly encounter such gangs.
I moved to NYC in 1981, when graffiti was all over everything, nearly everywhere. From 1981 to 1989, I lived in Manhattan and worked in East Elmhurst, (Queens), in a hotel directly across from LaGuardia Airport. I traveled to work in Queens at all hours and back home to the city in graffiti-plastered subways and graffiti-covered subway stations the whole way. The commute was 90 minutes each way. I never encountered any gangs or violence or danger anywhere in the streets or subway system for those eight years, (again, this was the 80s, when NYC was somewhat dangerous, though less so than the 70s). I finally got a day job in the city and the long, all-hours commutes ended.
Although I enjoyed some of the graffiti I saw, I do not deny that I preferred the subways and the city when the graffiti was cleaned away. But my preference was aesthetic, and not based on fear of gangs.
Sorry Ann but really?
The graffiti people experienced the ugliness and hopelessness and did something in weakness and desperation.
Isn't this just a version of "well she should not have worn such a short skirt" i.e. the building/surface/wall had it coming? Have the "taggers" NO agency to not "break the law"? How much weakness and desperation is a tagger actually feeling? How much of that is felt by the gang-banger tagging his "terf"? You see graffiti appearing in middle-class areas more and more lately. Some of it is art, lots is just vandalism. In all cases NO one was forced to spray paint on walls.
"... they understand that graffiti is not connected to violence."
Right. And walking into a store and filling a bag with things you don't intend to pay for isn't connected to violence either. Unless some stupid son-of-a-bitch tries to stop you.
Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.
Dindu Nuffin
Be aware that street art (as graffiti is known in some circles) has spawned businesses that sell spray paint designed expressly for this activity. It has also spawned websites that catalog the best paints for street art and explain the pros and cons. Then there's Banksy and his imitators.
E.g.:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/product-recommendations/best-spray-paints-1202689127/#!
https://www.artlex.com/buying-guides/best-spray-paint-for-graffiti/
Now where did I leave my bricks and m*lotov cocktails?
"Mostly, graffiti was the product of young non-gang affiliated men, who wanted to express themselves creatively in their urban environment with the tools at hand."
You know, Cookie, I think I'm beginning to get your range. I was looking at that fatuous statement, and I thought "That doesn't sound like how the graffiti got on my fence". And then I realized, you don't have a fence. You occupy an "urban environment" where everything belongs to someone else. So why would you be concerned if it is destroyed? Insurance will pay for it. You own nothing. And you're happy.
When I was a kid, my parents told me "If it's not yours, leave it alone." I guess people don't teach that to their kids anymore, then?
Spray paint your own house.
Graffiti is a sign of a weak society.
And again I will explain my rule of thumb for not getting mugged or killed.
If there are Caesar Chavez or MLK murals on buildings, you're in the wrong neighborhood.
"Mostly, graffiti was the product of young non-gang affiliated men..."
In LA's South Central, graffiti was most often an acknowledgement that the area you're standing in is under the aegis of a particular gang who will fuck your shit up if you deface it.
Come on, sheeple, it’s all about big spray paint. These corporate profiteers are ruining our cities with poisonous vapors and pigments just to create ill gotten wealth for people who have never worked a hard day tagging a train their entire lives. The resultant VOCs, lead, formaldehyde, benzine, and plasticizers are poisoning our inner cities. If a factory emitted 10 percent of the toxins a graffiti goon emits they would be thrown in jail.
But global warming takes a back seat to the “artistes of urban decay”. Environmentalism is a tool to destroy the people we don’t like.
Wiki “ Speed, portability, and permanence make aerosol paint a common graffiti medium. In the late 1970s, street graffiti writers' signatures and murals became more elaborate and a unique style developed as a factor of the aerosol medium and the speed required for illicit work. Many now recognize graffiti and street art as a unique art form and specifically manufactured aerosol paints are made for the graffiti artist.
Graffiti artist paints tend to be more expensive, but have a wider selection of rich colors, are thicker and less likely to drip. They are produced in standard high-pressure cans for fast, thick coverage and lower pressure cans for more control and flexibility. Most art brand paints have two or three mixing peas in a can. A wide array of actuators or caps are available, from standard "skinny" caps to wider "fat" caps, as well as caps that control the softness or crispness of the spray. Calligraphy caps create fan spray instead of the standard round.”
Choose the form of your distructor!
Jupiter @ 10:45am
You completely misread and missed the point of my comment.
"'Mostly, graffiti was the product of young non-gang affiliated men...'
"In LA's South Central, graffiti was most often an acknowledgement that the area you're standing in is under the aegis of a particular gang who will fuck your shit up if you deface it."
I cannot dispute that. I can only speak to the experience I was aware of and encountered in NYC. But, I did acknowledge that gang-tagging would be found only in the areas where the particular gang(s) lived and were active. However, the graffiti in NYC was found throughout the city and in several, (if not all) boroughs. It was not only (or even primarily) a gang phenomenon.
"...graffiti is not connected to violence." I would argue that it is connected to violence in the similar sense that alcohol is connected to drunk driving. Not everyone who drinks will drive impaired.
I feel the greater wrong is by the builders who blighted the cityscape with huge unfinished empty structures. That's the decline.
The lead time from concept to completion of a high rise in most cities can be near a decade- longer in blue cities. Who knew back then the city/nation would be controlled by idiots?
When I was a kid, my parents told me "If it's not yours, leave it alone." I guess people don't teach that to their kids anymore, then?
As VP Harris tells us, you just landed on "root causes"
The large percentage of kids running feral.
What is THAT root cause?
Family, or in this case, a much too enabling, generous Uncle. Uncle Sam
The war on Poverty, declared by LBJ injured millions in collateral damage, Black families.
The generous Uncle Sam provided lots of money. With the stipulation that Dad was not living there. And here we sit today with 60% of black families existing in single family households.
The rest, as the say, is History.
I'm curious why graffiti seems to be a male phenomenon. Don't women have the same drive toward self-expression? Is it a guy thing that I wouldn't understand, perchance?
Anyway, I'd like to propose (as many have done before, obviously) that anyone who speaks in terms of graffiti as an "art form" or the like be considered to have opened up his/her own property as a canvas. If it's art, why shouldn't you? Unless you thing, of course, that the art is something to be applied to other people's property (as local color or the like) as opposed to your own. Priority given to those who also maintain that "property is theft" or the like.
What tranquil, shaded, fenced-off bit of suburbia wouldn't be improved by a great multicolored juicy-lettered extravaganza on what once were its white walls? C'mon now, be honest! [/s, if needed]
Althouse, as regards "weakness and desperation," I don't see much of either here. That would be (again) better displayed by attacking the property of people with actual money, as opposed to the professedly broke. OTOH, the former are more likely to defend what they own.
Some consider graffiti art, some don't. Either way it's vandalism (w/o consent).
Enigma:
Regarding the notorious 1970s graffiti on NYC subway trains, some guy said he and his friends did it merely to spot their logos on the trains as they went by.
That "some guy" was lying doesn't enter into it?
Ann Althouse:
I feel the greater wrong is by the builders who blighted the cityscape with huge unfinished empty structures. That's the decline. The graffiti people experienced the ugliness and hopelessness and did something in weakness and desperation.
The first sentence is called deflection. The third is called mind reading, which no human can do.
Cook: like boxcars, etc. Outsider Art.
Graffiti is a sign that you have left civilization and are now in gang world or in a chaotic environment where nothing is respected.
"If there are Caesar Chavez or MLK murals on buildings, you're in the wrong neighborhood."
What if some talented white supremacist paints aesthetically pleasing graffiti with subtle white supremacist messaging on the Chavez and MLK murals?
Or on businesses owned and/or operated by Black or Hispanic persons?
Is that OK---artistic expression? Or really, really bad and awful?
I'm confused about the rules here.
"And here we sit today with 60% of black families existing in single family households.
The rest, as the say, is History."
Some people will say you're disrespecting the women who are single parents in those families. Not me, but some people.
Anybody want to guess what political party those women typically support?
No, PM, that's not Outsider Art, that's tagging.
"Graffiti is a sign that you have left civilization and are now in gang world or in a chaotic environment where nothing is respected."
Graffiti is found throughout the world and throughout history. There are graffiti on the walls at Pompeii.
Human nature and behavior prevails over time and place.
"I'm confused about the rules here."
Don't play dumb. There are no rules other than that the law renders putting graffiti on public and private structures as criminal behavior...except when authorized by a given municipality for a specific reason at a designated site.
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