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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

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

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."

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>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.

Resisting the ideology that only people with money can alter the city environment.

When you see an impressive sculpture or skyscraper you know a lot of resources were spent, you know the rich people here are rich. When you see an area with lots of graffiti, there may be many good or bad things about it, but you know the citizens are free.

I would hope graffitiers have respect to only draw on the mundane parts of the city, not on cool sculptures. And in my experience, that is true. Also they should not obscure windows or information signs.

I think the cultural barrier preventing me from understanding this way of thinking is impenetrable to me. What a strange world, huh?

Are you American? Freedom means the ability to do what you want. It doesn't mean owning guns.

>Are you American? Freedom means the ability to do what you want. It doesn't mean owning guns.

No, I am not, and I haven't mentioned guns or even hinted at the topic. Do whatever you want, but trying to purposefully destroy and smear the environment around you and claim it's an expression of freedom is ridiculous. It's just malicious, disgusting behavior that helps no one, serves no cause and has nothing to do with freedom.

I don't think most graffiti writers are trying to destroy their environment.

I'm not American, but I doubt being pro-graffiti is a universal American value. I suspect many Americans aren't that into it, given it makes the place look bad. Many Americans might think instead that you should only deface things you own.

I think it makes the place look like a place where people are free and not oppressed, which is nice.

They are oppressed by their neighbors, who can scribble all over their home without consequences.

Have you had to clean off graffiti?

Why would I have to clean it off?

because you find it ugly? Because the city/HOA is asking? Because it's a political message you don't agree with (or don't want your house to get burned for it)?

So I have problems with the government but I blame graffitiers?

Because if graffitiers didn't degrade your property, you wouldn't have to clean after them?

As a renter, graffiti is great for me, it keeps property values down which keeps rent lower. And given that I don't aesthetically give a shit about it, it's win/neutral for me.

I'm surprised you don't understand it. Put your money where your mouth is. Let me come over and tag all your property.

You would be doing so alongside tens of other artists, and then after a month or so I would whitewash the wall, and everyone would start up all over again. Such is street art. Kinda beautiful, how much effort people put into art they know will be gone or changed possibly within a couple days.

I think that's very exciting for you, because imo it's very rarely we encounter truly challenging problems like this.

I understand that you prefer to make up your mind about street artists, but I can assure you as someone that used to hold the same opinion, that opinion is held from a place of unfamiliarity with the culture and the people in it. It was very enlightening for me to step out of my SF tech circle into the street art scene and talk to very, very different people. You may be different but I personally find it very important to challenge my thinking by talking to very different kinds of people.

>I think that's very exciting for you

Random online interactions rarely change anyone's opinions, and you don't have to accept my worldview, and neither I need to accept yours. I am just somewhat saddened that there are people who would defend defacing the city like that, but at the same time, I understand that we are byproducts of our environment. I think I should consider myself lucky that I happen to live in a place which I appreciate. It's not that I am incapable of admiring art or loathe graffiti as a style, but, at least based on my experience, most of it are just cases of vandalism. My city actually have places dedicated to graffiti artists, so that they can create whatever they want freely, but I guess that removes at least some of the fun.

Our environment controls us, and we are also allowed to control our environment.

Graffiti is like protesting. The government likes to contain it and deny it and suppress it. Your city probably has a free speech zone where protesting is allowed, which is far out of the way so those protests won't have an audience, but that is not where protests occur when they occur.

>Your city probably has a free speech zone where protesting is allowed, which is far out of the way so those protests won't have an audience, but that is not where protests occur when they occur.

What a weird thing to say. I don't know whether you live in some totalitarian regime or assume that you do, but I don't. However, I can see it as means of protesting, an we can find examples of it in history and current day, but most graffiti out there is not that at all.

To be honest, most protesting is silly as well, go hang out in front of government buildings or go to a city council meeting to see for yourself, it's just as often legitimate grievances as it is nutballs ranting about aliens.

> So, what are these random scribblers resisting, exactly?

The idea that the city is owned by the uppermost caste of that society.

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

Massive cathedrals to the rich would be erected and made holy, and individuals upon whose back society is build would demonstrate that though entrance is barred to them, they still can make the thing their own.

Nowadays there's plenty of such things in a city that closes its doors to many people that live in said city. San Francisco is a great example of this, where rising costs are pushing anyone not working in tech. Graffiti is an easy way to spit in the face of the rich that are trying to take a city away from you. Clearly, it has an outsized impact on their sensibilities.

To me personally, it sounds really bizarre. I cannot understand this way of thinking, but I guess it's just a matter of cultural differences.

I suspect most graffiti doesn't actually have this twisted motivation. It's just selfishness by thoughtless people wanting to advertise themselves, like dogs marking their territory. This intellectual rationalisation is more of a projection by resentful people with a poisonous worldview.

I think you may have agreed with them a long time ago, when you chose your username. Have you perhaps become wealthier, in the interim?

Maybe just more mature.

Commentary is graffiti. We're all selfish dogs marking our territory, advertising that we exist.

Do you believe you're giving graffiti artists even a thimbleful of good faith by comparing them to dogs?

Is your concern that a thimbleful of good faith for vandals is too much or too little?

Too little, I tend to be highly suspicious of anyone that compares humans to dogs, it's usually not a good sign. Let alone for such a petty crime.

That explains why I see graffiti in all the rich neighborhoods and none in the poor neighborhoods </s>.

You don't see graffiti in rich neighborhoods either because you're describing the suburbs where nobody really lives (as a measurement of people per square kilometer) or because rich neighborhoods get immediate attention by cleaners (or the rich hire private cleaners).

There's plenty of graffiti in Manhattan, have you looked up how much it costs to rent there lately?

This is an interesting point, but I push back a bit. First, "Manhattan" is much larger than most people realise. There is almost no graffiti in the rich neighborhoods (Upper West/East, etc.), but there is plenty of graffitti in the more iffy neighborhoods (East Villiage, ABCs, SOHO, etc.). It pretty much scales with wealth -- richer has less graffiti. Second, specific to this post about San Francisco, there is almost no graffiti in the suburban areas out west (Sunset, Richmond) and wealthy neighborhoods like Russian Hill or The Marina, but loads of graffiti in The Mission, Potrero Hill, and SoMa.

You really think that the majority of taggers are thinking this deep? It’s mostly teenagers in high school that are mimicking others thinking “I’m so cool”. It fights nothing regardless. We can assign it value out of our asses all day and take some documentary as the truth, but if you think a kid writing a random scribble on the bart window or a bar bathroom, or a small business’s door deserves to take any of that back from the “caste” what are we talking about? The city is everyone’s, the tagger claiming a wall is as selective as what you claim the city is doing. Why do they think some random surface is more theirs than everyone else’s? I find tagging more selfish than what the city is doing.

> You really think that the majority of taggers are thinking this deep?

Nope, not something I thought up at all, this is what I discovered after talking to a lot of taggers and street artists as a result of my photography obsession leading me into the skater scene. I used to think tagging was just gangs marking territory (in reality only a small portion of it is).

What I have noticed is that a certain class of people have formed an immutable idea of taggers, skaters, and street artists, and that idea includes that for whatever reason all these sorts of folks are stupid. I've found that to be not the case at all.

I was a skater myself and many of the people I used to hang with would be into tagging. None of us were rich, if anything the taggers around me had more privileges than the not taggers. I couldn’t afford the expensive markers or spray cans for example. I don’t know what you mean by certain class of people.

This is just whitewashing crime.

The people being hurt by this aren't the millionaire or billionaire tech caste.

I'm reminded of when rioters were trashing stores in response to George Floyd's death. The usual justification was "oh business insurance will cover it, they need an outlet for their emotions" Well, the only grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood was out of commission for weeks due to damage. A black owned liquor store was burned down, and he didn't have insurance. Lots of similar stories on Lake Street. The people who deserved that harm the very least got it the most.

I really don't understand the connection between street art and the George Floyd protests. I understand that you generally don't like the idea of people operating outside of the State-mandated heteronormative way, in which case I say, the best way to prevent a riot is not have cops murder people.

We whitewash crime every day here, for example theft of labor value. It's not a crime in the USA but it is a crime insomuch as it's unethical.

I'm curious how you determine the value of your labor.

> how you determine the value of your labor.

Me too, but it's impossible to do so in any meaningfully accurate, objective, measurable way.

What works is when you negotiate with your employer and both come to an agreement on what labor you will provide and what you'll get paid for it.

Nobody has ever found a better system.

You said "value" of labor, not salary. Salary indicates at best, market rate, but often not even that. Value is something else entirely, and that something seems to be completely disconnected from capitalist measures of market price. See: investment banker salaries vs teachers. See also: the price of a monkey JPEG. Even capitalist value is disconnected from market price, see the current stock market.

> Nobody has ever found a better system.

Anarchists in Spain did in 1936 when they syndicalized the majority of the economy. BTW Walter I'm not sure you remember but I'm fairly certain you've replied these exact words to me before.

> Value is something else entirely

Value is what you're willing to pay for something, and what you're willing to accept as payment.

> Even capitalist value is disconnected from market price, see the current stock market.

The value of a stock is the market price. There is no other value.

The value of a teacher is what you're willing to pay for him, and what he is willing to accept. The value of government paid teachers is not knowable, since the money to pay them is forcibly extracted.

> I'm fairly certain you've replied these exact words to me before.

I've written this many times here!

Your confidence doesn't mean you're right. Your definition of value doesn't include a mechanism to determine the difference between contextual value, an awkwardness obvious in your comment, after all, the stock market wouldn't exist unless the value for a seller was different than the value for a buyer, or why else would the buyer buy? There's more than just price involved in the consideration.

Also, the word "value" is used outside of monetary contexts. If you said "I value you" to a loved one, I doubt even an avout capitalist libertarian such as yourself would be so heartless as to put a dollar price on that "value." So no, value is not just "what you're willing to pay." That's a Chicago school of economics lie that has been allowed to determine the mechanics of neoliberal society.

In any case this isn't really a conversation if you just keep saying the same thing over and over again, "value is cost," using basically undifferentiated examples.

If value was the price no trade would be possible. The seller needs to value the cash more than the good and vice versa.

> Nobody has ever found a better system.

Unions negotiating on behalf of the mass of workers works better.

That's very debatable.

It works here in Scandinavia.

>Even if it is, do we really need to tolerate it?

People not only tolerate, but I'd argue most people prefer it. I think, unlike Singapore or Tokyo, Americans, in cities, largely prefer a little lived in grime.

The Mission Bay is a relatively new neighborhood in San Francisco - mostly free of graffiti and is pretty much sterile, and most people would prefer to live in the Mission rather than Mission Bay. OpenAI likely pays a huge premium to HQ in the mission rather than settling in the more corporate offices of Mission Bay or even the Financial District.

I also noticed the same in Berlin - Kreuzberg, Neukolln, and other neighborhoods in East Berlin attract the most people, despite being drenched in graffiti.

If ever move to a city in America and tell people you live in the generally clean, spick and span, neighborhood in that city, half the people will look at you like you have 3 heads or simply assume you have no personality. Graffiti has largely become an accepted, or even valued, feature of a neighborhood. I believe internally it separates the "cool" city inhabitants from the "losers" out in the suburbs.

Edit: I just looked through all the images in the OP and one of them is a banksy. It's been there for over a decade. Graffiti isn't just tolerated, its practically protected.

What do you mean? OpenAI's main offices have been in Mission Bay since 2024

> 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.

Oh I disagree completely. Precisely because city spaces are more shared, vandalism, including graffiti, is Mitch more destructive in cities.

It really undermines the sense of community when vandals deface public spaces and community centers and apartment blocks.

consider that it's a symptom of a community fragmented by the result of the profit motive rather than a cause of the fragmentation

> It really undermines the sense of community

The people in these communities feel the opposite of you, especially since a lot of street art is murals capturing some local culture e.g. see Clarion Alley in San Francisco, a lot of very explicit messages of community.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/AAWmH3aq51MWN1M88

Graffiti is by definition uninvited and unwanted (esp. in SF city ordinance)

Then why is Clarion Alley covered in graffiti that hundreds of people a day come to look at? Why is said graffiti often applied by residents?

City ordinance is not an accurate reflection of the desires of all subsections of a city. It's a reflection of the desires of the ruling caste, whose needs sometimes, but frequently don't, align with those of "lower" castes.

A bench is a great place for a nap, unless the mayor happens to see you sleeping on one, gets scared, and calls the cops about it.

"It really undermines the sense of community when vandals deface public spaces and community centers and apartment blocks."

I much prefer graffiti in my field of vision than corporate billboards. In SF I don't even notice the graffiti, maybe because most of it is hard to read and understand? But I do notice the huge huge billboards over every thoroughfare with the stupid corny messages.

    > 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.

It's already usually illegal to do graffiti, sometimes that's the whole point.

(4) Afford young people more options and opportunities to do meaningful things.

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).

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.

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.

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

Why do you suspect that?

Sometimes tagging is that, sure, or just some person indicating that they exist there. For some taggers, it's an addiction. I knew one that would tag at people's houses when invited to parties. I was outside smoking a cigarette with him after the owner had threw him out on his ass, asking why he did shit like that, and he said "I just feel like if I can tag someone's house, it's like I've won."

I can kinda empathize since I'll have an addiction to getting the perfect photograph during a protest or whatever and will go to extreme lengths and burn through SD cards to get it.

In my experience the majority of graffiti is artists just putting up art. Privileged folk pass down the propaganda that graffiti is dirty and gangster and so any street art is viewed as dirty, but in the end it's just a matter of taste.

Art? There are some exceptions, indeed, where graffiti can be called art, but most of it is tasteless disgusting mess. It's borderline demonic in some cases. This especially applies to the list of pictures in the post. My theory is why ugliness is often considered beautiful is because ugliness invokes stronger and darker emotions.

    > "Borderline demonic"
    > look inside
    > it's Calvin and hobbes

> It's borderline demonic

Demons aren't real so I don't understand what this means.

> tasteless disgusting mess

Do you disagree that taste is subjective, then? It seems what's happening here is that you're very, very confident that you are an authority on what's beautiful, despite several people telling you they find beauty in what you abhor.

The type of art you like or dislike is a reflection of your mental state. In this sense, taste is subjective. However some of those mental states are good and some are evil, which is objective. If I suddenly find myself liking aggressive chaotic art, I'll be worried that something's changed in me in a bad way.

But you're right that I'm very confident in my measure of what's beautiful and what's not, and a few people aren't going to sway me. Even if every last human on the earth fell for this demonic art, I wouldn't budge.

Your unshaking confidence in your subjective experience as being representative of something factual about the universe made me peek at your history to see just how far it went. I found this comment:

> It's the Christian version of the Dao.

So far as I can tell, this isn't a thing that actually exists, but you refer to it as "the," meaning that to you, it's an objectively existing thing that we should all recognize.

Alongside that:

> The type of art you like or dislike is a reflection of your mental state

No, this is not objectively true in the way you seem to be implying.

> some of those mental states are good and some are evil, which is objective

No, practically by definition, "good" and "evil" are subjective.

> Even if every last human on the earth fell for this demonic art, I wouldn't budge.

Yes, this is clear.

Out of good faith and frank honesty I tell you this: There is no purpose in conversing with you, as apparently you're only capable of lecturing people of the Verified-by-Jehovah Revealed Truth of your personal ideology.

Yeah, and toddlers are supremely confident that broccoli is objectively bad because it's yucky.

Being incapable of overruling your base reactions is not a flex.

> the majority of graffiti is artists just putting up art.

Art? Where I live the overwhelming majority of graffiti is just a few letters forming meaningless words... Like even if it was art, no one could appreciate it because no one could understand it.

Eh, that kinda sucks. If you learn to read it, it can be a bit cool to see who's where. But I would say the majority of graffiti in my city is at minimum a little doodle, and often full blown murals. If that's not the case where you live that is indeed a bit ofa bummer.

The most well known writers (this is their term, few if any graffiti writers I know refer to themselves as artists) are actually the ones who paint trains, not in metro areas. Yes, writers do paint all over metro areas, but that gets buffed out so quickly that the real holy grail is to get up on trains that go all over the country.

Train graffiti allows your art to roam and writers from other cities see it and recognize it. Your creativity proceeds you when you go to other cities to write and expand where you're known.

I live in a large metro and see very little if any gang graffiti. Also, most of the really good stuff? You never know its there because its under bridges, in aqua ducts and other areas few, if any people know about or venture to.

"art"

> 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

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.

> 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.

I was thinking that too, it feels remarkably out of touch. People own the builds, homes, and businesses. If you're graffiting someone's business you're a tourist in the city, not an owner. Even from a philosophical perspective this makes no sense, because it claims the tourists hold ownership over someone else's city because they bought a can of spray paint while living in their parents basement

> 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

We were discussing graffiti.

You seem to know a lot better than less affluent people what's good for them. When you talk to such people, what do they tell you about crime, drugs, deadly injury, and filing for bankruptcy? When you've talked to graffiti artists, what led you to believe they were doing it so as to cause crime, drugs, deadly injury, and bankruptcy?

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