Letters Written in Paint

A few weeks ago, it was suggested here that to eliminate graffiti California simply ban aerosol spray paint. Though admittedly Draconian in sweep, the ban would deprive taggers of their essential tool. It also seems more civilized than lethal vigilante attacks--the method that has won acclaim from certain quarters since a pistol-packing pedestrian named William Masters II killed a tagger in Pacoima earlier this year.

The response has been vigorous, which demonstrates an underlying premise of the piece: Beyond all reason, graffiti has come to be viewed as a seminal horror. It no longer is regarded merely as a symbol of urban decay, but rather as the actual engine. First come the taggers; then the car thieves; finally, the gangbangers, and next stop Boise.

Several readers endorsed the approach, while a few felt obliged to offer their own ideas about how to erase the Great Menace: “I will pass petitions, walk precincts and send as much money as I can afford,” a woman from Pasadena declared via postcard, “to any organized effort to ban spray paint. I’ve also written Mayor Riordan and Caltrans with my own non-lethal anti-graffiti suggestion: Plant freeway access areas with Poison Oak and Ivy.”

Another correspondent, who signed his communiques Attila T. Hun, was less gentle: “THE BEST WAY TO ELIMINATE GRAFFITI VANDALS AND THE ILLEGAL MESS THEY CREATE IS TO SIMPLY TAKE BLACK PAINT AND PAINT A LARGE ‘X’ OVER WHAT THEY WROTE. THEY WILL SEE THIS AND ASSUME SOME OTHER VANDAL IS ‘DISSING’ THEM AND THEY WILL FIGHT AMONG THEMSELVES.” Eventually, only one tagger will be left standing, a lonely soul with nothing to do but spray his mark on the tombstones of the vanquished.

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A Santa Barbara resident promoted a psy-wars strategy: “My suggestion would be 10-second spots on television (some in English, others in Spanish) showing first a skinny and scruffy-looking dog lifting its leg to a fire hydrant, then a tagger furtively engaging in his occupation of choice while a gang-accented voice-over says something like ‘Yo, tagger! You ain’t no hound dog, man.’ ”

One reader from Orange County went a bit overboard and suggested banning, not only spray paint, but also cars and beer: “What exactly,” she asked, “is beer’s value to society?” In the spirit of seeking perspective, a Los Angeles poet named Margaret W. Romani forwarded a work that explored the timeless urge to leave one’s mark on the world:

On the stairway to the Parthenon--graffiti.

Game boards, tabulae lusoriae, carved into the stone,

Where soldiers whiled away the tedious time

Before the changing of the guard....

Along Byron’s comprehensive European tour--graffiti.

From the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion

To the cathedral tower at Strasbourg

To the Castle of Chillon in Lake Leman,

Byron was there! . . .

In the subways of New York--graffiti.

On el platforms of Chicago--graffiti.

On bus benches in Los Angeles--graffiti.

The shrieking silence of frustration, unheard.

The rebellion of despair, impervious to reproof.

The flamboyant brag of the illiterate,

I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!

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Naysayers made their way into the mailbag. Gun people, naturally, were appalled by any suggestion that banning an instrument of crime might actually deter the crime itself: “The only way to keep people from harming one another,” wrote one apostle of sarcasm, “is to cut off the arms, legs, and voice boxes of all people, from newborns on up to the oldest.” Yo.

And the president of a Carson-based spray-paint company waved the jobs flag. He challenged anyone to come down and tell his hard-working folks their jobs were at risk because the product they made was “evil and the true cause of urban decay, murder, and every other social ill.” This was powerful stuff. In these times of uncertain economics, the jobs argument tends to trump all others. Why, even the partner of the tagger slain by Masters later defended graffiti by suggesting that taggers create full employment for cleanup crews.

So where does all this leave us? Nowhere, probably. It would take rare political courage for a Sacramento legislator to promote a spray-paint ban--although Chicago this week began enforcing just such a measure. But at least we have our poison ivy to plant, and our X’s to paint, and our pistols to shoot. Ah, the Golden Age.