- While walking crosstown the other day, Señor Swanky’s caught my notice. This is some kind of restaurant that’s been sitting at Bleecker and Laguardia and was originally something that annoyed me, but has become part of the environment. What I noticed was that it had been covered with graffiti.

The yellow brick walls became a canvas for some graffiti writer.

Multicolored spray paint was used on the walls, and eggs were washed over the plate windows. This woke me to the fact that graffiti had come back to the walls of the city. Tough times brings out the spray paint, markers and illegible handwriting.

I started noticing the graffiti everywhere and it took only a couple of blocks of walking to capture a bunch of photos.


In the old days, it was the subway system that was overloaded with writing and drawings. Today, there are few specimen that can be found underground. Here’s the only bit I saw
at the popular Bleecker St. station – a trash can scratched.


In this new world of graffiti, it seems that it’s essential for the writing
to be completely illegible. Even the simplest of scribblings is incoherent.


Word to the wise: if you want your artwork to be noticed, don’t
write on top of print. Your illegible scribbling becomes even more so.
As a matter of fact, through all the mess, I now notice only that a
shoe repair shop is selling batteries. I wonder if they’re cheap?


Construction sites and gate guards are the obvious canvases
for the erstwhile but illegible correspondents.


A good example of the articluate. When confused, cross it out.


Menu board at a Spanish Restaurant with something added.
Is that GOOD or GODD or who knows?


Oh wait, that’s not graffiti !


This one might be some sort of code.
ZOOT! B$ Y.O.K!
A Twitterer without a computer or a celphone.


Mail boxes. When you don’t have anything to write or draw
make sure you’re using silver paint so it looks better.
For some reason, these brown boxes are targeted more often than the blue.


The mailbox (a Federal offence) has been the target of this person
who has earmarked quite a few places in the city.
Sort of a Taki183 for 2009.

I guess the most noted of current Graffiti artists is Banksy, but I think
he’s been too mainstream recently to really be considered a graffiti artist.