g is for god, good, gangs and graffiti

Man ‘graffiti’ has been in the news again a lot lately. At least it’s not at the level of shark hysteria of a couple of weeks ago, and the youth crime hysteria that we’re in the grip of right now. Mainstream media love a beat up but there is serious shit wrong all the same.

However the idea of graffiti as a gateway crime to a life of it, (as Mayor of Manukau Len Brown said) is akin to calling herb a gateway drug to junkyism. Stoopid.

“Tagging is a starting point for a lot of youngsters getting on to the criminal treadmill. Graffiti in our city is an issue we absolutely want to get on top of,”

Tagging was definitely the gateway crime for Bruce William Emery, the 50 year old business man charged with the murder of 15-year-old Pihema Clifford Cameron.

I feel for this guy his life screwed after a brain explosion, but not as much as I feel for the family of the victim. It’s probably best summed up by Fiasko in this forum on hiphopnz.com,

” tagger killed in manurewa ” what a shame his whole life comes down to being called a “tagger”, im glad to see he meant more than that to his family.

and what a shame a man makes it to 50, probably worked hard to build up that little business for himself, probably understood the real meaning of ” rewa hard “.
then goes and stabs a 15 y/o “child” for “tagging”. congratulations mate you really helped out your community, a real hero. the fences are now safe from the delinquent youth .

……..meanwhile girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes, involved with gangs . p is rife through the community, some poor wife is getting “the bash” as i type .
but at least we got him at “the starting point” before he “jumped on the criminal treadmill”. aint that right lord mayor of Manukua city, Mr Brown.

so concerned with fences, i think we forget whats behind them

rest in peace Pihema Clifford “

I can understand blind rage, but to this extent it’s pretty appalling.

The truly fucked thing however is this guy, Barry Corbett. You take the honour of being fuckhead of the year to date and looking pretty hard to beat with this comment,

“If I was on the jury, I would let him get away with it, but that is just me,”

Graffiti is a problem because most people think it’s poor, violent, brown people trawling their streets tagging fences, and with this perception it’s ok to call for them to be strung up naked and lashed with a cane (seriously just listen to talkback). They are scared of the thugs.

The truth is graffiti in your neighbourhood is made by people from your neighbourhood, if there’s tagging in Epsom it’s by kids from Epsom. A large number of taggers are middle and middle to upper class white kids whose parents are probably congratulating John Key on planning to install boot camps for all those little buggers, all the while giving their kids allowances to go buy montanas with. The truth is graffiti is to now what skateboarding was to the 90’s, the cool thing to do. In every school there are bunches of kids who smoke, spit and generally test their teenage spirit with anti-social activity, where once you’d just steal your parents liqour and get drunk, now you do that and then go tagging. It is not so much a subcultural activity as it is another cultural activity of teenagers like pashing and poking is.

So when people publicly state things like,

“What I’m wanting is a 95 to 98 per cent eradication of graffiti in our community.”

As (again) Manukau City Mayor Len Brown did in this article, then they are basically taking on popular culture. And frankly they don’t stand a shit show in achieving it. Seriously, the Auckland City Council have had a zero tolerance policy on graffiti for how long? And have the motorways even been more thrashed?? Better they just let it ride it’s popular wave out of here and give the $1.3 mill they spend every year on removal to writers to properly paint the walls. That $1.3 mill meanwhile goes to raqueteers who charge $25 per square meter of badly matched paint!?

Beyond the stabbings, beef, po-po, youth gangs, and all the bullshit…….

Askew cutting it up

Nice cut out on wood .. Great idea done well !

(night photo thanks to artist )

Mums the word

Cutting through the red tape

Pretty accurate example of the unnecessary nature of a lot of the red tape you may have to deal with in life.  A cool spontaneous installation just keeping you safe from the random piece of debris you may encounter.

city’s box

painted by City sometime ago I think. Like the way it keeps the old Misery character in play.

spot

Something about the DN throw that just hits the spot, and a couple of UBR pieces looking great in the late afternoon sun.

Stencils

Enforce1 dragon and an urging to self medicate. Just read Holland is working on the first ganja pill, kinda takes the fun out of it really.

stickers n tags

truth

This was pasted in Dunedin only for it to be taken after a couple of days, it’s a compliment when people like something enough to peel it off and take it home. Most people would have trouble giving  their work away.

Wellington

Got LOADS of stuff in from Welly from our man Sin, something for everyone here i’m sure.

Particularly liking the ‘whatup po-po, miss me?’ tag, the note from a flatmate to the other flatties which was on a table in the Salvation Army, and the poo conversation revealing the ingrained attitude of our capital towards big bro AK.

Impressive concentrations of stickers and equal parts liking and shuddering at the menstrual stencil and whaling tag.

Stencils in Welly always seem to want for execution, overspray KILLS stencils, nice ideas though.

And lastly a F is for Fun compilation, really liking the mix in this one. Great how the dude gets so hated on and just keeps going, and going, and going.

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