Sunday, November 30, 2025

Preface To Graffiti: So Much Graffiti

A photo of some graffiti on the wall of a local business. The phrase Most Cops Are Bad has been amended with Most crossed out, replaced by All. Underneath, someone has written Most Graffiti is bad, but bad has been crossed out & someone has written Bad Toys.

There was so much graffiti all over Portland during the pandemic. This especially happened to businesses that had closed or had closed up for the duration, & to houses that had been abandoned. It must've been a great time to go around painting on things. I remember one morning, when I was doing a show early on XRAY, driving on I-5 going north, I saw three guys just standing on the highway shoulder spray-painting a wall or a pillar or whatever. I don't even know if the police would've stopped at that point.

The city is much more active now & the graffiti level has dropped. There are still some rudimentary tags here & there but hardly any sentences written on the sides of walls as in the picture I took above, dated February 26, 2022. Nearly four years ago, wow. Hard to believe what we've lived through.

Or didn't live through, as the case may be. There are people I don't talk to because of the pandemic. Their inability to understand the deadliness of the virus - coupled with their incredibly stupid fear of vaccines - made me decide I didn't need those people in my life. It was a really dumb time & it continues to be very dumb.

You don't need me to tell you that, tho.

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