I'd replace billboards with graffiti in Portland any day. I can't stand that billboards are plastered all over the place, but one streak of paint on a building left unscrubbed will result in the person owning that building getting fines from the city. I miss the feel of an real urban environment and having real graffiti on walls and over passes.
I never said one is better than the other. Although I'd prefer shitty 'tags' with content that may be relevant to someone in 0.0001% of the cases over a shitty squiggle on the wall.
I always thought that instituting a similar policy as was done at Five Points in Long Island City in Queens in New York City (a curator who allowed talentedt artists to contiually refresh the walls of an abandoned warehouse with beautiful pieces of art and graffiti) would be awesome for the subways here in NYC.
They're just silver boxes with a tiny US flag as it stands now. They're pretty clean which is nice, they feature advertising although unless a company like Pepsi or Google buys the entire train's advertising and remakes their outsides as well it's generally not particularly intrusive (and to be fair, I found the Fanta train kind of neat).
I'd like to see more art in general although in neighborhoods like Bushwick there is generally a fair amount, and if you keep your eyes peeled there's still quite a fair amount of illicit street art as well. I'm all for it and think there should be a concerted effort to provide and encourage those who'd like to try with places to practice and eventually when they're very good rotating spots around the city.
In a city of 8.5 million in the five boroughs alone how could we not make use of our artists more effectively?
For reference, I did not mean unregulated graffiti but, as I mentioned, more along the regulated nature of Five Points NYC which looked like this before it was pointed over a few months ago. [0]
I'd replace billboards with graffiti in Portland any day. I can't stand that billboards are plastered all over the place, but one streak of paint on a building left unscrubbed will result in the person owning that building getting fines from the city. I miss the feel of an real urban environment and having real graffiti on walls and over passes.