> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Residents in no mood for game of tag
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/residents-in-no-mood-for-game-of-tag/
- Published: 2004-07-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:43:13.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Crime, Pico, #archive-import

This past week, Q-line asked: “Why can’t graffiti be considered an art form, regardless of its illegality? Why isn’t it socially accepted?”

Here are your responses: ✆ “Graffiti on a surface dedicated to that use could be considered an art form. After all, art is in the eye of the beholder, but graffiti defacing public or private property is no more than juvenile exhibitionism. The ‘graffiti artists’ enjoy thumbing their noses at society. They take advantage of well meaning but sadly misguided efforts to channel their frustration in a positive way. Defacing private or public property is not the answer, these people need to feel like they have a stake in society. Education is the answer, it’s the best anti-graffiti measure.” ✆ “I’m from New York. Graffiti goes back long before the hip hop culture began. The reason why we starting doing graffiti was to brighten up the neighborhood, to also motivate those who were down and depressed, to take our minds off the negativity that surrounded our outside environment. Instead of planting flowers, you painted pictures, pictures that expressed how you really feel, pictures that expressed the hurt and pain and the loss you felt of a family member or a friend, pictures that opened up the heart and opened up the minds and opened up the imagination. What you call vandalism, is what you do when you go to somebody’s $100,000 house and you write a name or gang name on their house, that’s vandalism. When you organize the artwork and you put it on a wall, that’s artwork. Those are artists who are getting together expressing themselves, expressing the community and how it feels. That is not vandalism. Tagging somebody’s house is vandalism. Tagging is vandalism. You people should know this. With our economy, being the way it is, this world is not black and white, there’s color and that’s what the artwork represents, and that’s what everyone needs to accept. Everything is not peachy. Let the artists express themselves. Let City Hall put the murals up. Let everyone have their freedom because that’s what this country is supposed to be about.” ✆ “Your graffiti question is the dumbest I’ve ever seen. What gives somebody the right to paint other people’s property? You want to do art, do it on your own canvas.” ✆ “The murals are a work of art, and to spray paint over a mural is graffiti and an act of destruction. If they want to be artists, do like the rest of the artists do, buy themselves some canvas or some wood and paint their pictures. To spray paint over someone else’s work of art is not artistic, I’m sorry.” ✆ “Graffiti cannot be considered an art form because true artists do not destroy another artist’s work as seen on our local murals. If you look at the graf-fiti walls at Venice Beach, you will see that this subliterate crap has spread beyond the sanction wall itself and like a cancer has spread to surrounding public property. Most people’s only exposure to graffiti is its ugly presence on private and public property. Don’t look to our City Council to take any meaningful steps to eradicate this social ill.” ✆ “Graffiti by another name is still graffiti.” ✆ “Illegal graffiti is disgusting, it’s gang-related, it’s egotism-related, it’s vulgar, it’s not kindly, it’s not good and it’s not from a good source. The illegal graffiti in Santa Monica have curse words. They use gang slogans, it’s disgusting. Real graffiti is art whereby you’re painting a mural on a wall, but gang-related graffiti is not right and it should be upheld against. We don’t want to see this kind of graffiti in this neighborhood. Recently I painted a wall that was graffitied, it had curse words on it, including the ‘f’ word. It was horrible.” ✆ “If graffiti is applied to a surface with the consent of the owners of that surface, it would be considered an art, like it or not. Usually it is applied to other people’s property or worse yet, on nature itself to everyone’s property. That’s when it becomes an assault, the artist puts his right to express himself above the rights of others, that’s just obnoxious self-obsession.” ✆ “Graffiti can’t be considered art unless you believe a dog lifting its leg to mark its territory is art. Hip hop and culture don’t belong in the same sentence, unless you believe infantile rhymes and holding one’s parts is cultured. Check your dictionary.” ✆ “Only a moron refers to graffiti as art.” ✆ “You ask stupid questions most of the times, so you will mostly get stupid answers. God, grow up.” ✆ “Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist, Norman Rockwell was an artist, graffiti taggers are vandals unless they have permission from the property owners who they’re defacing. They’re nothing more than the dogs that pee to mark their territories.” ✆ “Regarding your graffiti question, I thought you already did your April Fool’s issue this year.” ✆ “I live in the Pico neighborhood. My house, garden walls, garage doors, dumpster and once, even my car, have been vandalized by gang-banging graffi-ti punks. I’ve spent thousands of dollars to repair this damage. You suggest this may merely be artistic expression. I have a suggestion for all who consider this art: Please provide your name and address so all these poor misunderstood artists might be more appreciative than you for their devious destructive talent.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 10, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)