We've driven to Austin on the spur of the moment. Bess took the day off for a doctor's appointment and something at the bank additionally requiring my signature, and suddenly we had the whole day free to do with as we chose. So here we are at Austin Graffiti Park because Bess wanted to take a look at the place before they dig it up and move it to some other site out near the airport. It's officially known as the HOPE Outdoor Gallery, with the acronym standing for Helping Other People Everywhere. It was a housing project on the side of a hill, abandoned and ruined leaving only the walls, adopted by local graffiti artists, then made official during some SXSW event or other.
I quite like some graffiti art, although I don't really care whether you call it art or not. I particularly like the stuff I've seen sprayed on the side of Union Pacific railroad carriages which I encounter on an at least weekly basis as I follow the Tobin Trail beneath the bridge at Wetmore. I like what I see sprayed all across the southside of the city, which owes at least as much to the tradition of Mexican muralists as to anything else; and back in 1999 when I first visited Mexico City, I walked into the hotel bar on my very first night and met a couple of guys from the New York based Tats Cru - south of the border for some family wedding - which is probably equivalent to meeting royalty in graffiti terms.
Here in Austin, it's overcast and my enthusiasm probably isn't what it could be. We drove past a guy with a tail and I am now primed to expect idiocy. He looked to be in his late thirties and additionally wore a fedora, which is always a bad sign. His tail was long and bushy, yellow with black stripes, extending down from the seat of his pants almost to the ground. I realise how irrational it may seem to take such a profound dislike to a stranger based solely on their unorthodox appearance, but I'd probably go so far as to say that I actively hate the guy.
We find a place to park, then follow the street back along to the HOPE Outdoor Gallery. It's just a ruined pile of concrete junk set into the hillside, but with every surface a chaotic riot of colour. Empty spray cans and trash are strewn all around, and the place swarms with visitors climbing up and down worn slopes to the higher levels. It resembles the sets you always see in post-apocalyptic wasteland films, and I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. Worse still, the guy with the tail was apparently on his way here. He's set up shop with a marginally less irritating friend. They occupy the small central plaza of the site. They seem to be practicing circus skills with musical accompaniment from a smart phone hooked up to a battery-driven amplifier. I assume it's battery-driven, but maybe someone found a way to generate electricity by harnessing the annoyingness particles given off by useless wankers.
'Shouldn't you be working in a fucking bank or something?' I mutter as I watch the man with the tail juggling some kind of semi-circular dingus. He has the tip of his tail held between his teeth so that it doesn't get tangled up in whatever the fuck he's now started doing with a hula hoop, because having a tail can be such a pain - always getting caught up in things. I can feel my inner Hank Hill beginning to bristle as I prepare a speech about growing up, responsibility and so on.
'This is why people voted for Trump,' I tell Bess.
'I know,' she sighs.
We climb up one of the banks past giant nopal cacti sprayed lurid dayglo shades which nature never managed. This too annoys me, at least a little. It suggests a lack of respect for the natural world, as does the scree of plastic spray can detritus; but, you know, just so long as cunts get to express their precious creativity...
We pass a couple of young women on their way up the slope. One has short blonde hair, ostentatiously large spectacles, and a wide, unpleasant mouth.
'She's an artist and activist,' I growl quietly, in obscure reference to iO, occasional co-host of MTV's Catfish whose name is differently capitalised so as to challenge the phallocratic orthodoxy of having a normal fucking name like everyone else.
The corner of one wall is sprayed with the words TRUMP 4 LYFE in silver.
'See,' I say. 'I told you!'
We climb back down, then along, and then up the other side. Here and there we can see the remains of some lovingly rendered image sinking beneath a sea of hastily sprayed tags and markers.
'Why would you spray your stupid fucking name over that? How does that add to anything?'
'I know. It's dumb.'
Kids pick spray cans from the ground, shaking them to see if there's any paint left, occasionally adding a name to the chaos, or the Beautiful Chaos as one piece would have it; except it's no longer beautiful. It's just chaos.
Later I will learn that permits were once required, ensuring that only persons with either talent or something worth saying could add to the graffiti park, so what I'm presently seeing is what has happened since whoever looks after the place stopped caring.
It will be demolished anyway, so what does it matter?
Find a spray can and express yourself.
Most have expressed themselves as names. There's a shittily drawn eye in a pyramid submitted by someone who probably believes themself to be a bit of a deep thinker, and most depressing of all are the wonky school logos, Central Catholic and the like. I've never really understood people who enjoyed school but I can accept that they exist and probably had their reasons, but proudly spraying the name of your school on a wall seems like the most retarded thing I've ever heard of. Proud to be a drone, it seems to say, proud to be a component! Check out this awesome barcode I just had tattooed on my forehead.
What else can I tell you? I'm a good company man through and through. Ha ha! Guilty as charged.
I'm a tool. Hear me roar in accordance with accepted community standards. Here's my roaring permit if you need to see it.
'So,' I say to Bess, 'they're going to move all of this to some other place?'
'That's what I was told.'
'I can't see the point. Can you?'
'No.'
'It's not like there's anything special here.'
Later I read that they're moving a token lump of wall for the sake of physical continuity, but this crap will otherwise be bulldozed to make way for some new development.
Yet, the longer we hang around, the more we begin to see the place as it was. Here and there, an image emerges from the Jackson Pollock scrawl. There are lost wildstyle tags in jagged letters six foot high, pink, blue and other strange contrasts of colour, names you have to know to be able to read. There are faces and heads, Snoopy and el Chavo - a child played by an old man in a slightly disturbing Mexican kid's show. There are traces of what you could even call art, now drowning in the free expression of JOSH and Central Catholic and some witless Biblical reference needlessly sprayed across the once relatively proud visage of something that was either an armadillo or a futuristic robot. This is what happens when you give people free reign. Despite the best of intentions, they never have anything to say that's worth saying, and next thing you know - oh dang, look who we just voted for!
We pass a young couple. The boy is long-haired, skinny as a rake, over six foot, and he looks about seventeen at most. He wears a psychedelic top and circular rose-tinted Lennon specs. He's either got himself lost on the way to a costume parade or undercover cops are getting younger and younger. There's a third possibility - that he's just some hopeless twat trying too fucking hard like everyone else here - but I'm not thinking about it because I know that if I do it will annoy me.
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