Seven Red

Aug 21 2009

Graffiti Fridays: No Respect Edition

Posted by topspun at 7:28 am under Graffiti Fridays

So she shows me a copy of Time Out Chicago that features the web site bombchicago, billed as “perhaps the only website dedicated to documenting the local street-art scene.” Er, excuse me. Of course, my readers well know that I don’t document so-called “street art;” I document graffiti. So I guess that’s semi-accurate. The proprietor of the site, operating in full resentment mode, gets all pissed off that the state thought doing business as “Bomb Chicago” was in poor taste, and he says the following:

The graffiti artists that [the site is] following encounter the same attitude. They’re fighting censorship, and we’re documenting their process. In doing that, we became a victim of the same censorship.

I never met a graffiti writer in my life who was “battling censorship,” but then, they didn’t go around calling themselves “street artists” either, so there it is. But she pointed out the funny part of the article:

Last week, we followed up with the DBS, explaining Lee’s situation and asking if it was aware that bomb is a graffiti term. “Until you said what you said, I didn’t know what it was,” said Marilyn, a communications supervisor who didn’t give her last name. She explained that the process of determining whether an assumed name qualifies as offensive is subjective. “The final determination is made by our specialists,” she said. “It’s up to, basically, the office.”

So we asked Marilyn to reconsider Bomb Chicago. She put us on hold, talked for several minutes to her supervisor, Robert Durchholz, then got back on the line: “He doesn’t see any reason it shouldn’t go through,” she reported. “He said it’s not really distasteful.”

So for all Lee’s sniffiness about “censorship,” it turns out that the state bureaucrats really don’t give a flying fuck about “street art,” and figure it’s A-OK if it’s only about, like, bombing and not, you know, bombing. I should note here that any graffiti can be prosecuted as a felony in the State of Illinois. In any case, here are some felonies, since I’m not really “dedicated to documenting the local street art scene.” Harrumph.