Growing up in rural Iowa I did not see graffiti except on the side of barns.
There was this particular barn where Oak Hill Drive ran into NE 23rd ST that introduced me to it. I saw this barn when we headed to church in Des Moines. I learned from the big white letters on the side this gray, dilapidated barn that Dan and Kate were a couple and that Pigs eat S--t. Later, I saw graffiti on Rock Island and Union Pacific railroad cars.
My hometown of Altoona Iowa and my high school, took a hard line against graffiti. A few girls a little younger than me spray painted their names or initials on the Highway 6 underpass and made the Altoona Herald as being charged with some kind of crimes. During either freshman or sophomore years at Southeast Polk High School, someone spray painted the side of the gym with some kind of message I do not remember, but I remember Kermit Tannatt, the athletic director preaching that the kid who did it payed for the sand blasting and got charged to boot.
On a more serious note, as a social worker in North Carolina, I had taken interest in what graffiti meant given all the gang members I was getting as clients. It was the advertising of the streets and it marked territory. One girl who I took back to her home for a family visit pointed out her own gang's graffiti on the side of a building marking out their territory. Gang wars can be started when one gang "disrespects" another gang by graffiti or defacing the other gang's graffiti.
Otherwise, there is some graffiti out there that still makes me in awe of the crazy courage or poor lack of judgment that kids have in getting up on highway signs in the middle of the night and painting something that otherwise has no meaning to me.
Bringing it to the headline, there is some graffiti in Bon Air, and I am not exactly interested in knowing what it means.
A common place where there has been graffiti is on the wall along Brockton Lane.
The city has been through over the years and has painted over the graffiti. Lately, they have not been through.
Another recurrent place for graffiti is the Farnsley Park bathroom building, but it is currently nicely painted.
However, the graffiti that has my attention the most is a serial excrescence in three places that is probably created by a party calling them selves: Punch. It is the name on the dumpster behind the Bon Air Manor.
It may or may not be the name of the party, but it is the same color as the graffiti on the gray shed on the other side of the Bon Air Manor.
What is more, this same picture is in two other places in the Bon Air Neighborhood. The second place is by Sharon Circle and Fureen Drive:
What makes me think that this party has real skills is that he or she did a miniature of this on the sign right in front of the Highgate Springs garden on Furman Blvd at Taylorsville Rd.
It is almost like they took the same mail order art instruction classes that Charles Schultz took from the magazines where you drew the picture of the pirate or turtle in a different size other than the picture in the advertisement.
While I am giving "Punch" some notoriety, I am also giving notice, that I am giving the location of the public tags to 311 and requesting that they get painted over. It is up to Kyle Noltemeyer and his people whether or not they are going to do something about the tags on the out building behind the Bon Air Manor.
Since the Bon Air Mural under the Watterson got defaced in August, 2017 by some miscreant(s) I have came to see graffiti as pollution. It has no aesthetic appeal to it and spoils the space where it exists. Graffiti left up shows social degradation of a neighborhood or a city. It is created by people who lack civic pride and respect for social order.
In Louisville, you can report graffiti by calling 311/574-5000 or email a report at metrocall@louisvilleky.gov. Metro Government has painted over it in the past and I am hoping that they will take care of these. Let's keep Bon Air clean and free of graffiti.
There was this particular barn where Oak Hill Drive ran into NE 23rd ST that introduced me to it. I saw this barn when we headed to church in Des Moines. I learned from the big white letters on the side this gray, dilapidated barn that Dan and Kate were a couple and that Pigs eat S--t. Later, I saw graffiti on Rock Island and Union Pacific railroad cars.
My hometown of Altoona Iowa and my high school, took a hard line against graffiti. A few girls a little younger than me spray painted their names or initials on the Highway 6 underpass and made the Altoona Herald as being charged with some kind of crimes. During either freshman or sophomore years at Southeast Polk High School, someone spray painted the side of the gym with some kind of message I do not remember, but I remember Kermit Tannatt, the athletic director preaching that the kid who did it payed for the sand blasting and got charged to boot.
On a more serious note, as a social worker in North Carolina, I had taken interest in what graffiti meant given all the gang members I was getting as clients. It was the advertising of the streets and it marked territory. One girl who I took back to her home for a family visit pointed out her own gang's graffiti on the side of a building marking out their territory. Gang wars can be started when one gang "disrespects" another gang by graffiti or defacing the other gang's graffiti.
Otherwise, there is some graffiti out there that still makes me in awe of the crazy courage or poor lack of judgment that kids have in getting up on highway signs in the middle of the night and painting something that otherwise has no meaning to me.
Bringing it to the headline, there is some graffiti in Bon Air, and I am not exactly interested in knowing what it means.
A common place where there has been graffiti is on the wall along Brockton Lane.
The city has been through over the years and has painted over the graffiti. Lately, they have not been through.
Another recurrent place for graffiti is the Farnsley Park bathroom building, but it is currently nicely painted.
However, the graffiti that has my attention the most is a serial excrescence in three places that is probably created by a party calling them selves: Punch. It is the name on the dumpster behind the Bon Air Manor.
It may or may not be the name of the party, but it is the same color as the graffiti on the gray shed on the other side of the Bon Air Manor.
What is more, this same picture is in two other places in the Bon Air Neighborhood. The second place is by Sharon Circle and Fureen Drive:
What makes me think that this party has real skills is that he or she did a miniature of this on the sign right in front of the Highgate Springs garden on Furman Blvd at Taylorsville Rd.
While I am giving "Punch" some notoriety, I am also giving notice, that I am giving the location of the public tags to 311 and requesting that they get painted over. It is up to Kyle Noltemeyer and his people whether or not they are going to do something about the tags on the out building behind the Bon Air Manor.
Since the Bon Air Mural under the Watterson got defaced in August, 2017 by some miscreant(s) I have came to see graffiti as pollution. It has no aesthetic appeal to it and spoils the space where it exists. Graffiti left up shows social degradation of a neighborhood or a city. It is created by people who lack civic pride and respect for social order.
In Louisville, you can report graffiti by calling 311/574-5000 or email a report at metrocall@louisvilleky.gov. Metro Government has painted over it in the past and I am hoping that they will take care of these. Let's keep Bon Air clean and free of graffiti.
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