Tagging Douchebaggery Way Up, According to Us

Case in point. Nobody is afraid to tag in Seattle and generally it isn't that cool to look at. Photograph courtesy of Slightly North from the Seattlest Flickr pool.

Not everybody agrees graffiti has social value. One "artist's" urban enhancement is another man’s vandalism. We’re of the opinion that when left to the talented it’s generally a colorful and unique improvement to the city landscape. We understand those who disagree, but suspect they naturally hate anything to the left of the standard Belltown earth tone, which this city and its developer overlords keep insisting jibe with the character of the area.

Tagging, on the other hand, can go fuck itself. Generally tagging is the domain of delinquent teenagers looking to rep for a douchebag clique of nobody dorks taking themselves way too seriously or aimless gang youth lacking a constructive outlet for their pride and anger.

To the former group: nobody can decipher your bullshit scribbling, save maybe two like-minded friends who've got nothing better to do than ugly up Seattle’s infrastructure with untalented expressions of vanity, so grow up already. To the latter, it’s only a matter of time before expressions of gang intimidation are classified on some level of domestic terrorism so cut that shit out, it’s ugly and evil, and there’s nothing really cool about evil when you get down to it.

Of course nobody of the tagging ilk is going to listen to a long-winded blog rant, much less change course until the city takes a real stand, so don’t hold your breath.

Worst of all, it seems like shitty tagging is on the serious upswing regionally. Just last week, some of the old Olmstead brickwork at Kinnear Park was tagged with mindless scribbling that will probably never fully come out. A month earlier, half the walls on lower Queen Anne’s Counterbalance Park were hit with massive tags, literally the visual equivalent of constant noise pollution. Some effort has been made to erase the markings but still they persist. Recently the pillars of the monorail on Fifth Avenue were given a fresh once-over of shitty hieroglyphics. Thanks, kids!

We’ve read in L.A.--where "everything is worse than Seattle, so be grateful for the limp-wristed government we’ve got"--they have a community service-based program to eradicate all reported graffiti within four business days. Unfortunately, Seattle's response is much slower and instills less confidence (10 days at best according to the Mayor’s office). We suspect you would have to spray Nickels in the face before he would take notice, much less care. We’ve seen the same tags in very public places going on months now and, yes, we’ve started reporting them. We’re pretty sure we aren’t the only commuter who sees the monorail tags on a daily basis. Memo to Nickels: eyesores and eye candy ain’t the same. Fix it.