i’ll admit it. i’m a book whore. and on my last visa run to costa rica i spent an obscene amount of time fingering the swollen shelves of mora books. mora books is an excellent used book store in downtown san jose. sometimes i think i spend more time there than i do with my girlfriend. in my defense, i’ve yet to find a good used bookstore in panama, so by the time i hit san jose i’m hard up.
truth is, if i’m not buying books, or malingering in outdoor cafe’s like the worst kind of bohemian, i’m hiking the city. and it was on one of these walks that i stumbled across signs of an interesting sub-culture in san jose. it was near the museo national, where i found several old walls featuring funky tico-style graffiti.
some folks think graffiti’s a new trick played by drugged-up inner city kids. but the word graffiti, comes from the italian graffito, or little scribblings. back in the day the romans used this word to describe etchings in pottery, plaster, and on walls. i understand they found quite a bit of graffiti when they dug up pompeii.
burglar, watch out!
lovers, like bees, lead a honey-sweet life.
i don’t want to sell my husband.
someone at whose table i do not dine, lucius istacidius is a barbarian to me.
graffiti’s not a new phenomenon. only the methods , styles, and messages have changed. still, to many it’s an eyesore, or worse, evidence of gang activity, and falling property values. to home and business owners, graffiti’s a threat to their very way of life. it’s the old broken window theory – that if the window/graffiti doesn’t get fixed/removed, the neighborhood turns to crap.
but graffiti’s not a broken window. it’s honest, often artistic, expression. and it can be an excellent means of social protest. is graffiti offensive? if it’s anything like this website – quite often it is. but how can anyone really complain about graffiti when billboards pimp high end jeans, jewelry, and perfumes in the third world?
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i’m lucky. i can admire graffiti from a distance. i don’t need graffiti. panama after hours is my wall of shame. but there are people, afraid, or unable to speak the truth. and graffiti gives them a voice, a shot to spew their feelings across the walls of the city.
like hungry kids with empty cups, graffiti’s hard to ignore. and when i pass by these words and images in the street every day, good or bad, i can’t help but be affected.
I love graffiti…
one of the best i ever saw personally was in the men’s room of the greatest music club in the world, tipitina’s in new orleans back in the early 80s and i’ll never forget it…
someone had written: “my mother made me a homosexual”
Beneath it someone else wrote: “if i give her the yarn will she make me one, too?”
Comment by Old Salt — May 3, 2007 @ 8:52 am
Was that Dr. John’s place? Tippitina?
Comment by Raul — May 3, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
Or Prof. Longhair? I can’t remember.
Comment by Raul — May 3, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
Professor Longhair. His pic was, and still is, on a big banner behind the stage, and it’s from his song by the same name. i used to see the “fess” play all the time, though i missed the last night he played before dying later that night.
one night i went to see dr. john (real name: mac rebenack)there. he came on a little after midnight. all by himself. no band. he sat down at the piano and, in his scratchy voice said,”anything you want to hear, just write it on a napkin and send it on up.”
he played until 3 in the morning when he said he was going to take a short break. He came back about a half hour later and when he finished the second set it was almost 7 in the morning and the sun was up.
the price of a ticket that night was $5!!! I don’t think a half dozen people left that night after he started playing. That was back around 1982.
Comment by Old Salt — May 3, 2007 @ 6:07 pm