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San Francisco Graffiti

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121–130 of 257 posts

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#121
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did he argue SF likes graffiti? I don't think he does, and the people living in the city certainly don't. These are criminals tagging buildings, and city officials who either don't care or are too busy with other things. I'm not aware of anyone who actually lives there who likes graffiti, and logically there's no reason anyone should. If someone wanted a mural they would have hired a real artist to do it.

He's arguing that the authorities aren't doing anything about it, and the reason is, (going out on a limb here) SF residents are sympathetic to the renegade artistic expression argument.

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#122

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, c…

I'm surprised and also not. We're a long ways away from 90s hacker culture, and even then there were plenty of upper class kids that were just in it for good pay working for the giant tech corps. We like to romanticize everyone dropping acid and being part of the counter culture, myself included, but reality is different.

The saddest part to me is that the aesthetic of street art has been totally consumed by major corporations and spit back out on to the streets here in Brooklyn. I laugh to myself whenever I walk by a tourist taking a selfie in front of some mural that is really just some brand advertisement.

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#123

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, c…

I don't know anyone in tech who enjoyed watching gangs mark their territory with tags in their neighborhood.

Sometime in the last 30 years I realized the "gang territory marking" thing is mostly made up and basically not to take anyone seriously when they say this.

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#124
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did he argue SF likes graffiti? I don't think he does, and the people living in the city certainly don't. These are criminals tagging buildings, and city officials who either don't care or are too busy with other things. I'm not aware of anyone who actually lives there who likes graffiti, and logically there's no reason anyone should. If someone wanted a mural they would have hired a real artist to do it.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#126
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree with everything you said but I don't understand the imgur reference

That you "want to have your cake and eat it too," is what they're saying.

Yon dog does too.

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#127
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he argue SF likes graffiti? I don't think he does, and the people living in the city certainly don't. These are criminals tagging buildings, and city officials who either don't care or are too busy with other things. I'm not aware of anyone who actually lives there who likes graffiti, and logically there's no reason anyone should. If someone wanted a mural they would have hired a real artist to do it.

He's arguing that the authorities aren't doing anything about it, and the reason is, (going out on a limb here) SF residents are sympathetic to the renegade artistic expression argument.

But not sympathetic to corporate expression via renegade spray-painting. (Justin Bieber, now ASAP Rocky)

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-city-attorney-goi...

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 nei…

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

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#129
There was an article that came through here a little while ago describing the process by which commercial property owners and banks collude to keep storefronts boarded up and vacant because otherwise they’d have to adjust the loan terms or take a loss somewhere, but sure, go off about how the graffiti artists tagging the boarded up windows are the ones making the city ugly.

Re: San Francisco Graffiti

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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 like…

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