Thursday, August 28, 2003
Reading the local papers I sometimes wonder if my borough is full of NIMBYs, because there seems to be people opposed to anything new. There are people who are opposed to the building of a nice new art centre on a patch of mud in the middle of North Finchley (it's not like you can consider the area a high point of artistic excellence and as it's surrounded by shops it's not like it's going to block the light to anyone's homes) and people in East Finchley who are opposed to a two storey building opposite the tube station entrance being converted in to a two storey building which has Waitrose downstairs and a new East Finchley library upstairs (and believe me, we need it) but then people in East Finchley tend to flee from anyone carrying a camera on the grounds they fear they might steal their souls.
However, in local news this week 'anti-graffiti vigilantes' have been, um, sticking up posters around a Hendon underpass popular with graffiti kids taking the piss out of them. Sounds a bit like fucking for abstinence or fighting for peace but there you go. Now, I will admit that it seems unlikely that the next Banksy will be coming from Barnet, travelling around the borough it does seem that the taggers are interested only in spraying the three or four letters of their name, such as 'TOX 02' and there's no attempt to make it look interesting, just white spray-paint on whatever surface comes to hand. I do wish that they'd put a bit more effort into things so that we could have the sorts of wonderful murals you see in, umm, books on graffiti. But this campaign isn't much of a way to deal with things, especially when they have such slogans such as 'Graffiti is a sub-culture for a sub-species' and 'Graf ain't hip hop - it's a batty boy 'ting'. Charming. But then, if you actually live in that part of Barnet, you need your head examined as it's a quite staggeringly ugly place, which is probably what drives people to random acts of homophobia. Shit, maybe I should move down to Brighton...
However, in local news this week 'anti-graffiti vigilantes' have been, um, sticking up posters around a Hendon underpass popular with graffiti kids taking the piss out of them. Sounds a bit like fucking for abstinence or fighting for peace but there you go. Now, I will admit that it seems unlikely that the next Banksy will be coming from Barnet, travelling around the borough it does seem that the taggers are interested only in spraying the three or four letters of their name, such as 'TOX 02' and there's no attempt to make it look interesting, just white spray-paint on whatever surface comes to hand. I do wish that they'd put a bit more effort into things so that we could have the sorts of wonderful murals you see in, umm, books on graffiti. But this campaign isn't much of a way to deal with things, especially when they have such slogans such as 'Graffiti is a sub-culture for a sub-species' and 'Graf ain't hip hop - it's a batty boy 'ting'. Charming. But then, if you actually live in that part of Barnet, you need your head examined as it's a quite staggeringly ugly place, which is probably what drives people to random acts of homophobia. Shit, maybe I should move down to Brighton...
