bonus post

The 5 Pointz trip was great. All of the artwork was amazing and diverse. Hopefully sooner than later they will fix the staircase and people can tour inside the buildings! Because the artists have to pay for their space I don't see the 5 Pointz graffiti as political protest art. However I'm sure some of the artwork is politically driven. The political graffiti breaks the rules a little to make people look at a situation outside of their box. For example I think Bansky has effectively political graffiti. Other than 5 Pointz I see graffiti all over New York City. Often times it is simply a tagged name of a person or group. In the Lower East Side there is an artist by the name of Chico and his artwork is on the walls and gates of Alphabet City. Chico has a mural of Obama, numerous community geared murals, and some in memory of ... murals. He is not the best at tagging, but it seems to be that the local businesses hire him to decorate their outside guard rails, leaving personality on the store's facade after it has been locked up. I heard recently that New York is going to remove all of the solid guard gates and replace them with heavy linked ones so that graffiti cannot be placed outside of businesses after hours. I think the graffiti adds character to my neighborhood and its neat to look for Chico's work, which is always around the corner. There aren't enough places like 5 Pointz where people can legally and publicly express themselves!