Oh the many miles this whorphan walked Saturday through Philadelphia. It is a good thing he wore his new leather work boots – they needed breaking in and to make his skin's acquaintance. His wanderings were neither useless nor wanton; he managed to photograph nearly ten dozen examples of street art, or graffiti, which he can now process, preserve, curate, and display.
In some cities, graffiti inhabits certain areas more frequently than others; persons seeking it can simply show up at the popular spots and gather to their hearts' content without much craning or swiveling of the head. In Philadelphia, however, street art must be stalked and searched for, culled from the backs of tall signposts and canvassed from the sides of news kiosks, utility boxes, and telephone poles. In fact, the author found entire blocks denuded of beauty, small rectangular patches of dirty glue on the backs of otherwise unused spaces such as parking-meter poles and transformer boxes the only remaining evidence of hundreds of works of art. But if the fruitful labor of the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist (SDUBS) were easy to find, and if his strange and colorful images required less effort and patience to obtain, the wonderful phenomenon that is street art would be as mysterious as an unadorned dumpster and as appealing as the sound of mating swine.
In the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, one must tease beauty from the forgotten and the under-utilized places and ignore the suspicious glances of the uninitiated as one applies one's own paltry contributions with deft slight of hand. This author thanks the disparate street artists of Philadelphia for re-applying their art as soon as the city has paid to have it destroyed. Keep fighting the good fight, you tenacious SDUBS, and mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
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