I confess I felt a certain sense of relief that I was not the only one that had ever stood in that desolate place hoping for a ride to come along.
Even to this day, there is still a ton of the hobo language and communication you can find on nearly every train. Living in the Midwest, its incredibly interesting when you see trains coming in from the East and West coast and the graffiti they still have on them from 10 years ago. The amount of doodles and philosophical thoughts are on every train.
There's so many people documenting this on social media now, its pretty cool.
I found this interesting:
“I can only speculate that after having experienced lockdowns thanks to the pandemic and with travel restrictions having recently been lifted worldwide, writers are eager to make up for lost time,”
A lot of the writers I know where I am (large Midwestern city) hated the pandemic because it created a ton of new writers who suddenly decided they wanted to do graffiti. One of the well known writers said it basically flooded their scene with a bunch "toys" (inexperienced poor artists) who were needlessly tagging anything and everything. They didn't know a lot of the unwritten rules and in many instances have pissed off a lot of the more experienced writers and their crews by going over older pieces, or putting up garbage over well respected writers. Its caused a lot of upheaval in the culture for several years. Things are starting to level out, but there's still a lot of younger writers still learning how this whole thing works.
It is true that even in our city I've seen a big influx of writers and crews coming from other cities. Unless you're a huge name in another country, its a good bet you're stuff will get covered up pretty quick as writers and crews are insanely protective of spots.
Graffiti has a lot of weird paradoxes like the fact there's "no rules" but there are a ton of unwritten rules writers and crews must follow.
The Dust Bowl displaced half a million farm workers. Lots of people on the move, with no means of support.
My maternal family lived in Santa Clara, CA from about the 1910’s, when it was largely orchards.
p1anecrazy•7mo ago
cafard•7mo ago