What unusual graffiti or objects or whatever, have you seen while walking around, that made you smile?
here’s one I saw written on a sign outside University College London
I thought it was a nice change from people signing their name or other incomprehensible crap in spray paint all over the place.
So what sort of things have you seen that you didn’t expect to?
Something someone had written, or an object, or something someone had done to something that made you smile, or stop and think.
I’d like to know, I like these little quirks of humanity.
One time I picked up a newspaper on a train and on the inside page someone had written, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind you nicking my newspaper. There’s a great story on page 9’
Which amused me haha
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44 Answers
Banksy recently hit the Mission in SF.
I feel so honored!
One that always stuck in my mind was in Canberra in the seventies – on a rear lane-way wall visible from the main road. It stayed there for a decade in letters several feet high.
“My Karma ran over my Dogma!”
Would Banksy still be charged with criminal damage for graffiti given that having one of his works on the side of your building probably increases it’s value?
They’ll have to catch him first.
Given the problems in SF, catching Banksy is relatively low on the list of law enforcement priorities.
@Captain_Fantasy yes! I was hoping someone would bring up Banksy! You should do! There are a few of his pieces in and around London, I’ve seen the kissing policemen in Brighton which was great. What did he paint???
@Captain_Fantasy oh fantastic, I like that one! I love that his work is so public. My favourite is flowerthrower I have it on a large canvas in my front room. Man is a genius!
and @Lightlyseared A bunch of thieves tried to cut a piece of his out of a wall with industrial saws and whatnot because it would have gone for £280,000 upwards.
I wasn’t really walking around, rather sitting in my sofe, but my girlfriend pointed me to this clip.
Moving graffiti.
In London:
There was a construction site with a barrier painted orange that said “This Is Not An Eyesore”. And a painting on a museum of a yellow “monster”, complete with hairy testicles.
I was pretty amazed when someone tagged the United Nations building. You have to see something like this in person to really appreciate it.
Whatever always makes me smile.
Right after Richard Nixon resigned my family was driving through San Clemente (which was where Nixon had retired to) on Avenida Del Presidente and someone had spray painted “ex” above Presidente on just about all the street signs we saw.
There was a huge ever changing fish painted on a boxcar out here.
If I was stopped at a local switching yard, I looked for this fish. Sometimes it came through, sometimes not.
It was exceedingly well done, with various well done insanity in the background. One time it came through defaced, the next it came through fixed, it was constantly evolving. I heard that it had been a staple on that one boxcar for years, evolving constantly.
I have to go to that switching yard this year to see if it is still going. No clue where this thing originated at, how many graffiti aritsts went into it, and if it is still going.
@Captain_Fantasy I am jealous.
One of the stores in my neighborhood has a black Bart Simpson spraypainted on the side.
Oh… in the city I live in, there is a very very old Cathedral. It has some graffiti on it from the 1200’s. And it says… ‘Bishop XXX likes little boys’ There’s also names and dates, but that one really stood out for me.
@cazzie _It has some graffiti on it from the 1200’s. _
Yeah – right. You should at least try to make it believable.
@DarkScribe you don’t believe me? I can go take a picture of the wall the stuff is written on, if you like. ....
@lilikoi I love that! Hhaha
@Michael_Huntington That is really clever, I like the ones with a political message.
@Bluefreedom was that the U.N. in Geneva or NY? WOW. I would pay to know how they managed that without getting caught.
@Arisztid An ever changing fish? Thats the most unusual one I’ve heard of.
And @everyone an internet quirk I found was typing ‘lol limewire’ into Google and then clicking I’m feeling lucky.
hehe
@cazzie DarkScribe you don’t believe me?
Nope – I don’t believe it.
You might, but if so you are more gullible than I imagined. There is no way that graffiti in or on a Cathedral would have survived since the 1200’s. To be caught doing such a thing in those days would have resulted in a very nasty end – burning alive being probably one of the least painful. Even if it happened and the miscreant was not caught, the graffiti would have been instantly removed.
@cazzie thats interesting. just to go with a point @DarkScribe is making, how do you know its been there since the 1200’s? It might have been done more recently than that?
Thanks for your answer.
You’re wrong. You don’t know anything about the history of the city I live in. The city’s history goes back to 900’s. The graffiti was carved in and was an accepted practice to put your name and date you did your pilgrimage. Seeing someone marking the building would have been normal. You’re projecting your modern day values on a life you wouldn’t recognise if you were transported there. This was is full of markings that date back over the ages. The one I mentioned is among several on this old wall that are dated from 1200’s to… I’m not sure..perhaps the 1800’s.
NOW the building is protected. Every marking and rebuild over it’s history has been documented.
Why do you think you’d know more about this city and the history here than me?
@cazzie Why do you think you’d know more about this city and the history here than me?
It is called “a logical thought process coupled with historical awareness.”
@DarkScribe I’ll send you links, so you better brush up on your Norwegian.
I have a Swedish passport, (among others) but no Norwegian language skills.
I don’t need your links, I can tell you now that the Church in those days would not have left graffiti in a Cathedral that insulted their Bishops. It does not matter what city, the Church was ruled from Rome. You seem to lack an awareness of history and the realities of those times.
@cazzie Does that stuff look new to you?
Yes. If it relates to an insult to a Bishop in the 1200s, then definitely yes. You cannot determine the age of something carved by looking at it. Also there is nothing there to indicate that it was in a Cathedral dating to the 1200s.
The Church would not have allowed such a thing to remain. The Bishop concerned (who had tremendous power in those days), would hardly have left it there. USE YOUR COMMON SENSE!
Nothing there to indicate there was a Cathedral here dating back to the 1200s? WTH? You’re winding me up, aren’t you? Taking the piss? Would you like to read the history of this particular Cathedral? This structure dates back to the 1100’s. It’s had several rebuilds, fires, expansion, then the reformation… in the 1500’s I think.. It’s all documented. There are real books about it and everything! St Olav and the whole story there…. the Christening of Norway…. chopping the heads off of the ones who wouldn’t convert..
I know you’re old and all, but there is a history of the earth before you lived on it. wink
@cazzie Nothing there to indicate there was a Cathedral here dating back to the 1200s
There is nothing to indicate that those “images” are from a Cathedral dating to the 1200s. Learn to read. I have no interest in the history of the Cathedral, I have visited older – just in the ludicrous claim that graffiti in that Cathedral could remain. It wouldn’t and if there was such graffiti, interest in little boys was quite common in those days – hardly raise eyebrows – that is a modern insult.
@DarkScribe You’re backing off on BOTH your points now. There IS very old medieval writing on this Cathedral AND it states that the Bishop likes little boys and it was left up. I’m NOT making this up. It’s not MY observation. It’s an historical building, with it’s history well documented, including the writing on it. Full stop. A mildly veiled insult written in a local dialect that probably eluded anyone taking offence for decades.
@cazzie DarkScribe You’re backing off on BOTH your points now.
Only if you cannot read responses. I am backing off on nothing.
You would have more chance of writing “Obama rapes babies” in ten foot high letters on a Whitehouse wall and having it remain for five hundred years. In those days the Church was the ultimate authority and it was vengeful.
Even if graffiti was flattering to the Bishop it would have been removed. Graffiti in Cathedrals was not acceptable.
‘It wouldn’t and if there was such graffiti, interest in little boys was quite common in those days – hardly raise eyebrows – that is a modern insult.’ you said that it would hardly raise eyebrows.
There is a river near my house named “NORRIS RIVER”
someone wrote “CHUCK” over it in giant black marker.
it makes me smile whenever i pass it
also…
my friend Jon has a stencil of his face (dont know how he got it) and he has spray-paint-stenciled his face onto about 15 stop signs in our town.
ALSO…
someone spraypainted a giant penis on a tree.. and someone else came by and made it into a smiley face :)
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I also once saw the enrance to a community called Ocean Pines where somebody had taken the metal “i” and “e” from “Pines” on the brick entryway and swapped them. Gotta love a community called Ocean Penis.
There’s a wall near where I live that used to have a nice graffiti scene on it (no banksy but still quite nice). The local authorities came and painted over it and with in the day some one had drawn a picture of a penis and written “I hope you’re proud of yourselves. You used to have art now all you have is a giant cock”
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