Freakonomics: Touring Gangland

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/touring-gangland/

by cwan • 17 years ago

14 8 17 years ago

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

"..he'd like to see some early profits send a graffiti "tagger" to art school."

I'm into photographing abandoned buildings, and the graffiti inside them is often incredibly artistic. Too bad that there's no publicly-sanctioned space for these artists to show off their work. Perhaps the illicitness of the process is part of the allure, but I can't imagine working that hard on something that would be seen by few. What's also notable is that, at least to my as a middle-class white guy, most graffiti doesn't seem gang-related. Most of the low-quality stuff probably is, but the good stuff is often something incredible like an abstract city skyline.

Bluem00• 17 years ago

You might be interested in the Venice Beach public art walls. They are repainted every weekend with high quality "graffiti".

http://www.veniceartwalls.com/

jordanb• 17 years ago

Berlin has some designated "grafitti walls."

Since they get overprinted so much, nothing there lasts long. People use them for practice before going elsewhere to do their masterpieces.

ja30278• 17 years ago

It's odd, but as I've gotten older I've _really_ started to hate graffiti...for every undiscovered artistic genius practicing art 'outside the mainstream', there are 5000 ignorant 'X was here' messages uglify-ing the landscape.

Paper is cheap enough that there isn't a need to vandalize your surroundings in order to express yourself. If you absolutely _must_ paint mural size graphics, do it on the walls inside your house.

Also, get off my lawn.

epe• 17 years ago

http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/horizontal_1.htm

kiujhygfvgbn• 17 years ago

Same thing in Belfast. Once it was realised that the 350years of civil war had all been just a silly misunderstanding they started running tours of the murals.

Some of them have to have preservation orders slapped on them to stop developers removing a 30foot high IRA painting to improve house prices. They may even have to start paying people to repaint them as they weather away.

wgj• 17 years ago

In the sidebar, "Sik" means "cool", where cool has magically been promoted to a non-slang word. Or at least to the BBC writer's ears.

Zot95• 17 years ago

I can't decide if the idea is demeaning or really demeaning. After reading in the linked article that the original plans called for the tourists to be "shot" by local kids with a water pistol and then sold a "I got shot in LA!" T-shirt, I'm not sure that the tour companies' hearts are in the right place... I'm leaning towards really demeaning.

Freakonomics: Touring Gangland

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