San Francisco Graffiti

(walzr.com)

99 points | by walz 10 hours ago

25 comments

  • toephu2 25 minutes ago
    For a small business owner, graffiti is an unconsented, recurring tax that provides zero ROI for the neighborhood. In SF if you own a business that gets tagged, you have X number of days to clean it up yourself otherwise YOU get fined.. the city does nothing to go after the criminals. They only go after law-abiding tax paying citizens cause that's where the money is.
    • nipponese 18 minutes ago
      This site scrapes the city efforts to document who is doing "how much" damage/art.

      Once they catch an artist in the act, they will use these archives to recommend a punishment.

      But your point in valid - San Francisco likes graffiti.

  • jasonkester 9 hours ago
    I live near Paris, and it's a shame to see this sort of thing on every surface here. It's so easy and effortless to trash the look of a place, and so much effort and pain to get it back to a presentable state. It just seems hopeless trying to stop it.

    Sure, you can point to examples of graffiti that don't look all that bad, and I imagine some examples can even be considered to improve the look of a space. But taking this site as a random sample, the "good" ones are a vanishing minority. For every subtle Invader mosaic high on a building, you get dozens of effortless name tags that just wreck the look of a place.

    Adding frustration is the fact that there's no way to effectively dissuade people from doing this. You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. You just want them to stop spraypainting shit. It's really the only example I can think of where I'd support some form of corporal punishment. Catch kids in the act, 20 lashes in the town square to convince them not to do it again, then set them to work with a wire brush until they can demonstrate that it's back to the state they found it. Even still, I can't imagine it would really do much to dissuade.

    It's a shame.

    • dcposch 1 hour ago
      > You don't want to fine, jail or otherwise ruin the lives of thousands of kids to get them to stop. > You just want them to stop spraypainting shit.

      https://i.imgur.com/qaFgSm7.png

      You have it backwards. It's the act of NOT fining them, NOT calling their parents, of ignoring small destructive acts that ruins lives.

      Almost everyone doing a 10 year sentence for a serious crime started out by getting away with a lot of small ones.

    • zahlman 23 minutes ago
      I consider corporal punishment inherently barbaric. An appropriate fine or short stay in jail ought not be life-ruining.

      Also, I think there are other effective approaches in some circumstances. People (including "the kids"), locally (Toronto) and other places I've heard of, have been paid (not a super common thing, but it happens) to do actual artwork. There's a mural I consider quite well done, not too far from my place, that isn't getting defaced even though it's in a place where I would otherwise ordinarily expect strong temptation to "tagging" and other graffiti.

    • socalgal2 2 hours ago
      Tons of people unfortunately see this as ok. My response to them is always "let me tag your car, your house, your laptop" and if you complain you're a hypocrite

      I like "Street Art" where permission has been given. I don't like tagging and property destruction. Maybe when I get a little older I'll find some graffiti exhibit at a museum and go tag it.

    • s_dev 9 hours ago
      I think there is a lot of nuance here. Just as councils and developers can construct ugly buildings artists can also add ugly work to walls.

      I agree there is a spectrum. On one hand you've Banksy or Basquiat adding to a flat grey wall and creating art that has a political voice or some artistic merit and the other you've some twat scribbling hate symbols on a historic monument. I don't have on ideas on how we can ensure one and not the other though.

      • dkarl 1 hour ago
        It sounds like you're saying the only thing ugly about tagging is when it contains objectionable political content. That's not really responding to the complaint here, which is that the vast majority of it is low effort, low quality tagging that makes things aesthetically uglier. It's easy to go out with a collector's eye, cherry-pick the good stuff, and put together a slideshow that makes it look like a public amenity, but that ignores the overall effect of wall after building after block of proof of Sturgeon's Law.

        Is it ignorable? Does all the terrible stuff just disappear into the background, or should we care about how it affects the experiences of people who have to live with it and walk past it every day? I think that's the question people are arguing.

    • mahrain 7 hours ago
      One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?
      • threethirtytwo 2 hours ago
        Also culture. There’s just no culture of it.
      • brador 7 hours ago
        It’s explained by punishment.
        • jerlam 2 hours ago
          Also probably a lot of surveillance. Not just cameras, but by people in the community.
          • droopyEyelids 12 minutes ago
            People underestimate the tattle-tale culture in China.
        • direwolf20 7 hours ago
          If you execute everyone who commits a misdemeanor, crime rates are extremely low.
      • GrowingSideways 6 hours ago
        [dead]
    • komali2 9 hours ago
      No accounting for taste, but, graffiti is important whether it's aesthetically pleasing or not.

      https://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/

      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."

      • ZpJuUuNaQ5 7 hours ago
        >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.

        • komali2 6 hours ago
          > 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.

          • nmeofthestate 3 hours ago
            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.
            • dole 48 minutes ago
              Commentary is graffiti. We're all selfish dogs marking our territory, advertising that we exist.
            • fwip 2 hours ago
              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?
          • ZpJuUuNaQ5 6 hours ago
            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.
          • stickfigure 52 minutes ago
            That explains why I see graffiti in all the rich neighborhoods and none in the poor neighborhoods </s>.
        • nemothekid 47 minutes ago
          >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.

        • direwolf20 7 hours ago
          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.

          • ZpJuUuNaQ5 6 hours ago
            I think the cultural barrier preventing me from understanding this way of thinking is impenetrable to me. What a strange world, huh?
            • direwolf20 4 hours ago
              Are you American? Freedom means the ability to do what you want. It doesn't mean owning guns.
              • nmeofthestate 3 hours ago
                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.
                • direwolf20 2 hours ago
                  I think it makes the place look like a place where people are free and not oppressed, which is nice.
                  • lostdog 48 minutes ago
                    They are oppressed by their neighbors, who can scribble all over their home without consequences.

                    Have you had to clean off graffiti?

              • ZpJuUuNaQ5 3 hours ago
                >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.

              • socalgal2 2 hours ago
                I'm surprised you don't understand it. Put your money where your mouth is. Let me come over and tag all your property.
      • ryandrake 52 minutes ago
        > 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.

      • nurettin 2 hours ago
        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.
      • akomtu 7 hours ago
        I suspect it's not the population's expression of ownership, but simply gangs marking their territory.
        • komali2 6 hours ago
          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.

          • akomtu 2 hours ago
            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.
            • fwip 2 hours ago

                  > "Borderline demonic"
                  > look inside
                  > it's Calvin and hobbes
        • at-fates-hands 1 hour ago
          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.

        • direwolf20 7 hours ago
          Why do you suspect that?
    • mmooss 1 hour ago
      To include the obvious in this discussion, it's your opinion that street art / graffiti makes things ugly; others feel differently. I think it brings places alive, brings human expression into the otherwise highly controlled environment. There's a spirit to it, and I love to see kids who have no voice take the step of speaking up. I love to see it, generally. To me it's a sign of freedom and very democratic.

      As for it's quality as art, I don't buy that's a purely subjective, arbitrary opinion (meaning, I think it's reasonable to use some judgment). But people still differ greatly: look at their responses to abstract expressionism, for example; some people think it's trash, others pay tens of millions.

      There is plenty of ugly in cities: There is a lot of ugly architecture; buildings are much more visually prominent and for aesthetics I would remove the ugly ones much sooner than removing the street art. There is ugly advertising and marketing; there are ugly industrial sites on beautiful waterfronts and in neighborhoods.

      Should those be subject to the same judgement as some kids expressing themselves? The people who make the buildings, ads, sites have far more power and resources, including enough to make those beautiful. They seem much more responsible for the results than the kids, who may have nothing else.

      • lostdog 47 minutes ago
        Please post your address. I'd like to help make your home "feel alive."
    • GrowingSideways 6 hours ago
      [dead]
    • rimbo789 9 hours ago
      I like graffiti - even random tags over blank walls because it’s a sign people are truly living and breathing in a space.

      As long as there have been walls there has been graffiti. Spaces without graffiti are artificial and antiseptic.

      • bigDinosaur 9 hours ago
        Graffiti on things like trees (e.g. in urban parks) is awful and trees are the opposite of artificial and antiseptic. The main problem with graffiti is that most of it is made without thought or consideration, and that never ends well.
        • direwolf20 6 hours ago
          Yes, I think they should avoid covering other works of art, nature, information signs, and windows. But blank space should be fair game.
          • nmeofthestate 3 hours ago
            Most graffiti is an ugly demoralising reminder of the existence of thoughtless people who have no consideration for others and are happy to degrade the shared public space for a few seconds of selfish enjoyment. For some reason it's got noticeably worse where I live, feels like over the last couple of years.
            • chickensong 35 minutes ago
              I wish you'd stop being coy and just tell us how you really feel.
            • GuinansEyebrows 2 hours ago
              most modern buildings are an ugly demoralising reminder of the existence of thoughtless people who have no consideration for others and are happy to degrade the shared public space for a few seconds of selfish enjoyment (or in this case, millions of dollars at the public's expense).
      • InMice 6 hours ago
        I like that part of it too - but feel that if I owned a building and had people spraying paint all over its exterior whenever they felt like it...maybe not so much.
      • socalgal2 2 hours ago
        Tell me your address so I can come tag your car or your windows or your laptop

        Graffiti is property destruction, pure and simple. I'm happy to come destroy your property. Complain and you're a hypocrite

        • rimbo789 50 minutes ago
          There are tags all over my building, it’s lovely. Please come add more
        • nemomarx 1 hour ago
          Why windows and not their homes walls? People rarely tag windows in my experience, or cars.
  • voidUpdate 6 hours ago
    The thing that really gets me about graffiti is that you don't own the canvas. It's just vandalism. If you're commissioned to do it one someone else's wall, I'd call that a mural instead, and I see quite a few aesthetically pleasing ones around. Why can't you paint on stuff you actually own, instead of making it someone else's problem? You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art
    • nipponese 25 minutes ago
      If a graffiti artist believed shitting on a lawn was art, they would, but they don't.

      The problem and solution are similar to OSS:

      The problem: the artists have something to say, they want as many people as possible to see it and use it.

      The solution: make it free, and put it where as many people as possible can access it.

      Yes, I just compared graffiti to github.

    • Ylpertnodi 3 hours ago
      > You might as well just shit on someone else's lawn and say it's fine because it's art.

      Are you referring to 'tagging' (putting your, or your gang name on something)?

      I agree.

      Referring to well-crafted, or political (think banksy), images, i agree less. Unless i don't like the image/style then it's only lawn-worthy.

      • socalgal2 2 hours ago
        I don't agree with the political graffiti either. See imgur as where this leads. imgur used to be interesting images. Now it's 90% images of text as political statements. The site is effectively ruined.
  • greeniskool 8 hours ago
    Having a bit of a cultural shock at how English doesn't have a separate name for the "cruder" graffiti (such as tags) vs the more socially accepted street art. The former is typically called "pichação" [1] in Portuguese, and I was taught this distinction when learning about modern art movements back in elementary school.

    [1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picha%C3%A7%C3%A3o - I recommend looking into a machine translated version of the Portuguese Wikipedia article, as the English Wikipedia article reads far more biased

    • pimlottc 1 hour ago
      There are terms within the scene - tag, throwie, piece, burner - but they are not generally known by the wider public.

      https://www.kmuw.org/beautiful-city/2014-08-04/what-were-tal...

      https://www.instagram.com/p/COrxyrCMkOx/

    • rconti 1 hour ago
      Graffiti is the catch-all, but "street art" vs "tagging" have pretty clearly distinct meaning.
    • garbawarb 7 hours ago
      Is "street art" not the name? Like how "comics" are low but "graphic novels" are respectable.
    • kingkawn 7 hours ago
      English does, and definitely invented it before the rest of the world caught on to this culture. Try watching “Wild Style” from 1983, documenting some of the earliest beefs between the types of graffiti artists. Portuguese speakers did not invent this distinction.

      Throw ups are the quick ones and Pieces are the long ones.

  • s_dev 9 hours ago
    Fascinating, I do love street art and tastefully done graffiti. Some of it is obnoxious. I think it does add to the character of a city e.g. New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris all have some amazing work etc.

    I submit Irish Graffiti I see here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Graifiti/

    Though I think displaying these things as a map is more useful: https://streetartcities.com/cities/sanfrancisco

    There is a an Irish artist called Dan Leo and I have bought lots of his prints. https://www.danleodesign.com/ so they are dotted around my office and home.

    I think they're great! He does animals and I love the style, clean lines and bright colours, they remind me of US football team logos.

    • Gigachad 9 hours ago
      I'm probably the minority where I don't mind any graffiti, quality or not. As long as it isn't horribly offensive or impacting the functionality of something (over signs/glass/etc). Think I just prefer the look of a wall covered in even shitty tags and pasted posters over a completely blank slate.

      I particularly love seeing peoples stickers about.

  • jameslk 37 minutes ago
    I wish I could say this evoked a nostalgic feeling, but having lived in SF, the literal memory that came to mind immediately seeing these is the repulsive smell of urine and the sight of dirty, trash-laden sidewalks. While graffiti itself could be viewed as artistic expression on its own, I liked looking at some of it, in my mind it seems so often correlated with decay
  • walthamstow 8 hours ago
    As an aside, the Financial Times (yes, that one) did a great interview a couple of years ago with prolific London graff artist 10FOOT.

    The comments were predictably howling with rage and injustice ("he's a criminal!!", says employee of cartel laundry HSBC), but I enjoyed it a lot.

    https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-b7d9-4c16-b1c2-71def32cc...

    • xnorswap 7 hours ago
      He is indeed incredibly prolific, anyone taking a train around london will recognise 10FOOT.

      But he is not an artist, he literally just tags 10Foot in what could be described as looking like it was done with a marker pen.

      something like this is very typical: https://ldngraffiti.co.uk/graffiti/writers/flash?pic=152931&...

      I enjoy good graffiti, but 10FOOT does not fall into that category.

      • walthamstow 2 hours ago
        Your link describes him as an author or writer, which is a kind of artist I guess. I'm not bothered about the nomenclature.
  • mergy 7 hours ago
    Lasercats that was briefly on the old theatre on Divisadero remains a favorite. This was like 15 years ago.

    https://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/xndqw-full.jpg

  • InMice 9 hours ago
    Cool, but why lay out the images in such an annoying way? Whatever happened to simple, functional photo galleries? I miss them.
    • guerrilla 9 hours ago
      It works great on mobile. That's more than I can say for most things.
      • InMice 9 hours ago
        Turn your phone to landscape, does it sitll work for you? Or are you stuck viewing only the top half of the images and unable to scroll down.

        Side scrolling in portrait is not my opinion of working great. It does work to view them at least. Youre trapped in a vertical scroll, no way to get back to the beginning but scroll all the way back.

  • deadfall23 2 hours ago
    I did a similar pet project about 12 years ago called Graffiti City. It was very simple map that displays pins where reported cases of destruction of property with paint, aka graffiti art, throughout the city of San Francisco. This uses public data available at data.sfgov.org.
  • molsongolden 48 minutes ago
    Scraping these from the city violations DB was a cool idea.
  • comrade1234 6 hours ago
    We have places in Zurich where anyone can spray (I'm sure most cities have designated areas like this) but they still come out into the neighborhoods and do it. Its usually in areas with poor refugee/subsidized housing but the people doing the graffiti are local young swiss, making areas where they don't live shittier.
    • bigstrat2003 1 hour ago
      Well yeah, of course they do. Contrary to what what some in this thread are claiming, the modal graffiti isn't self expression or a yearning for freedom. It's tweaking people's noses by altering the property without permission. You can't do that on a designated spray area, so those people have to go into the neighborhoods to get their jollies by pissing people off.
  • asveikau 1 hour ago
    I'm surprised to see so many anti-graffiti comments here. Some of these are crude or ugly (and I'm aware that this is subjective), but a few of these are really good and don't deserve a citation. Meanwhile this thread is SCANDALIZED that there is GRAFFITI (clutch your pearls!). It really goes to show the ongoing slide into total conformity that is the tech industry. I remember when tech had more of a nonconformist, countercultural bent, but it has been dying for quite a few years.
    • browsingonly 11 minutes ago
      I don't know anyone in tech who enjoyed watching gangs mark their territory with tags in their neighborhood.
  • rib3ye 7 hours ago
    I’m the early 2000s I worked as an assistant producer on a San Francisco graffiti documentary featuring several of these artists

    https://youtu.be/7Ub8uRFzUCQ

  • senfiaj 9 hours ago
  • wumms 10 hours ago
    Would have looked further, but scroll wheel finger cramped. Keyboard nav would be great.
    • kg 9 hours ago
      Enabling the browser's scrollbar would also be good.
  • ghuroo1 9 hours ago
    I like the concept, wish it was a vertical scroll with some safe margins between each picture (also to give them more stage time and removing the noise/distraction from many pictures stitched together)
  • defrost 9 hours ago
    As a suggestion,

    * Orientation - some images are sideways,

    * Option to walk through by date order, and by location ...

    There is an audience for the time ordered flux of images on particular sites (at least in Australia).

  • mvellandi 8 hours ago
    This collection is a bit ordinary and unremarkable. There are many great large format, new/used print books on street art
    • tieze 8 hours ago
      That is arguably the point. They are taken from the SF city website and are placed in arbitrary order. I personally love this unfiltered take.

      There's more to get from these than just aesthetics, precisely because they're not curated.

  • JKCalhoun 8 hours ago
    Some of these are great.

    I expect the mundane "wildstyle" tagging on train cars but have been surprised a few times to see trains roll through town with much more complex graffiti. I'm happy to see examples of some of that more artful work in this post.

    If you've seen the film, "Brother From Another Planet" you might look at graffiti a little differently as I do. :-)

  • themark 7 hours ago
    I scrolled pretty far and didnt see Borf in there. Was that Web 2.0 ?
  • threethirtytwo 7 hours ago
    Beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

    It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.

    For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.

    • direwolf20 6 hours ago
      If they're not covering windows, signs or art, what is being vandalized? A blank slab of concrete performs its function equally well no matter the color.
      • toephu2 21 minutes ago
        A 'blank slab of concrete' isn't just a structural element; it’s a signal of stewardship. When you ignore tagging on that slab, you create a permission structure for more intrusive vandalism. It’s the 'Broken Windows' theory in practice: tagging leads to broken glass, which leads to copper theft, because the physical environment signals that the space is unmonitored and ownership is absent.

        High-trust societies rely on the shared maintenance of the commons. If the community can't even agree to keep a wall clean, it’s a leading indicator that the city has lost the ability to enforce the social contract on larger issues.

        Sadly this is partly why SF will never be a high-trust society.

      • toephu2 32 minutes ago
        Most graffiti is just tagging, scribbling their name on something. I do not consider this art. It makes the environment you live in lease appealing (looks more ghetto).
      • threethirtytwo 4 hours ago
        Bro a lot of these aren’t beautiful quotes. Gang signs, immature shit from kids who do most of this stuff. Some is beautiful art most someone just signed their name.
        • Ylpertnodi 3 hours ago
          At what age would you suggest whipping or lashing kids?

          Would you personally be prepared to do it? Or, the owners of the property

          Should it be public lashings, or pay-per-view, or witnessed only by a select group of people, you place your trust in?

          If it's a caught female, can men whip her?

          How would you phrase the job application?

          I see a few flaws in your idea. Does Singapore still not allow males with long hair?

          • threethirtytwo 2 hours ago
            In Asia it’s done as young as 5. Maybe that’s why they’re ahead.

            > If it's a caught female, can men whip her?

            Yes. Men and women are equal. Your question implies you are sexism. Do you believe women are superior to men?

            > How would you phrase the job application?

            Whatever term they use in Singapore.

            > I see a few flaws in your idea. Does Singapore still not allow males with long hair?

            There’s tradeoffs for either idea. San Francisco is covered with human shit while Singapore isn’t and you can get whipped for shitting in the streets.

            Remarkably in both systems not very many people get whipped. Nearly zero. Because the possible consequence is what enforces the rule, not the actual consequence itself. As long as people know they will be whipped, they then act in ways that will prevent the whipping from happening. In the beginning a few people will be whipped but that number will drop dramatically very shortly.

        • direwolf20 2 hours ago
          You didn't answer the question.
  • fleroviumna 9 hours ago
    [dead]
  • metalman 9 hours ago
    If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal.

    It's ok

    • direwolf20 6 hours ago
      It is illegal. It gives the population the idea they have the right to alter their environment, and that's dangerous.
      • readthenotes1 4 hours ago
        Alter other people's property.

        Agreed, that is a dangerous concept

        • direwolf20 2 hours ago
          *in ways that don't harm that person
          • browsingonly 10 minutes ago
            Not all harm is physical.
          • bigstrat2003 1 hour ago
            Nonsense. The owner almost certainly doesn't want someone's "art" to adorn his wall, and will then have to pay to restore the wall to its desired condition. That is material harm done to the building owner.