Vandalism? I Think Not... (Photo Blog entry)

~*Music Of the Moment*~ Artist: MC5 (Motor City 5) Album: The Big Bang!: Best Of The MC5

Other listening: DevinandMarty.com podcast (Gosh Marty, you sure can swear!)

Reading of the moment: Douglas Adams "The Restaurant at the End of The Universe" (The second book in the "Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series.)

Yesterday I spent my evening with my very good friend, the Wiggler!?! himself, Mr! Erik.

While wandering about Gastown, the some-parts tourist trap, most-parts all around dive and homeless epicentre of Vancouver; my mind was in overdrive. After seeing him get a couple of tattoos touched up (Even though I have nine, I've never been able to watch myself getting them done, eight of them are on my back, therefore I physically COULDN'T watch them being done, and when I got my first one I was too chickenshit to watch how it was done... Whatever...) and eating the closest thing to New York City pizza I've had in ages, we strolled around, finding a Venti extra-sweet vanilla Latte for me at a local Starbucks discussing things like politics, (Okay, HE talked about politics, I just listened. He's got a helluva nice voice, always has a quip or remark seconds after I make a comment, gets me relaxed, and keeps me laughing a majority of the time with some of the audacious things he's done and he says, and the things he's said he's done. It's terribly appreciated.) We share the same opinion about the benefits of being able to laugh at just about anything that comes our way or suffer with the consequences of being too damned grown up and serious. We were discussing how I could do the cover for his latest album, which sounds phenomenal, and is the tightest album I've heard him do to date. I'm more than willing to do for him for free, (not something I do often anymore) since he busts his hump doing the music for free. He also razzed my rather Charlie Sheen-esque shag 'do going on right now (I'm trying to grow it out.) I've heard the "Chandler" I've heard that I've got "anime" hair, but that's the first time someone has ever referenced it to Charlie Sheen in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. *sighs*

Erik, quite honestly... Well, he blows my intellect out of the water with his knowledge of Rock n' fucking roll, politics, and an all around world wise savvy, and sometimes... It's all I can do to just sit there and listen to him talk. I'm not as smart as I look, and sometimes I think he's smarter than God, but since he's a devout athiest, he wouldn't appreciate that thought. At the very least I respect him heaps, and he genuinely was the first male to show me respect in a previous relationship, and he'll always have my gratitude and reciprocal respect for that, even though our relationship is over and neither he nor I are planning on ressurrecting it.

At any rate, I'm not really getting to the point, am I? Yeah, yeah, you're thinking. He's a good guy, get on with it already. So be it.

So, we're walking around and I keep on spotting these things that for him, he sees everyday, and for me, are new and exciting... And I'll tell you why.

I've always been partial to grafitti. It's not something I'm in any way skilled at doing, and I'd dread to pick up a can of spray paint and attempt to do something fantastically artistic on my own. I'd end up covered in paint, with handprints on the wall ala caveman paintings from prehistoric eras. My skills are limited to photographical manipulation, logos, and arranging images in a pleasing manner all digitally rendered and quite appreciated for the fact that I don't end up with paint/clay/whatever all over my immaculate person.(hah!) The most I'm able to do with hand done artwork in the past, is create some sort of pathetic Partridge Family bus grid/Mondrian (example 2)/Merot style paintings of faces; and while this sense of kitsch is appealing to some, for this artist (being me) it gets tired pretty fast.

I saw at least four different murals on our wanderings through Gastown, one of a fantastic mythical garden:
pic 1:

Pic 2:

Pic 3:


(larger views of pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.)

Ones of various tags:



(Click here for a larger view)


(Larger image)



(Larger image)

One of fantastically superbright African colours with pastel tagwork:



(Click here for a larger view)

And the one that absolutely blew my mind. I'll get into that in a moment. I snapped pictures of all of these, and once I've had some time to fiddle with them in Photoshop, adjusting them from the absolutely gargantuan, behemoth file sizes that they are raw from my digi-cam, into something a little more bandwidth friendly so that flickr doesn't butcher them on my unwilling behalf. I'll post them up on my Flickr.com account, and consider it bandwidth well spent, even if it exhausts my account uploading for the month.

Now, for the last mural. We stumbled across this on the way back from Starbucks. Better photos are going to be put up soon, this is just to give you an idea of scale and how impressive it is. Erik had no idea this one even existed, and he was impressed as much as I was. On the wall of an abandoned old basketball court, alongside the entire length of it, approximately 25 to 30 feet in length and 10-12 feet tall, (possibly taller, my sense of scale is always off) this entire piece is only in blues, white and black. I counted a minimum of seven artist tags on this piece and the theme was Egypt. I've got all sorts of angles from this piece in particular, and I'm looking forward to splicing it all together in a panoramic photograph in Photoshop. When I get the time, that is.



( Click here for a larger view of this photo)

I particularly love the time before dusk and during dusk, since colours seem their most vivid, and that is when I got the chance to take most of these photos. It's like the world decides to shine a giant blacklight on colours making them stand out. There's something to be said about reveling in your senses, and I'm absolutely hedonistic when it comes to super saturated colours and artwork.

I dragged poor Erik around this skeezy, abandoned basketball court, snapping at least 30 pictures of this thing, from all angles, repeat shots in case the first were blurry, you name it. He took it with wonderful aplomb, (Thanks, Sugar!) indulging me in my photographical orgy of the senses. I don't think I would've had the proverbial balls to go snap photographs in this area of town by myself when the ground I was standing on to take these pictures was littered with the orange caps of hypodermic needles, broken glass, sleeping bags, tarps, cardboard boxes and spray paint nozzles. I won't say I enjoy the less savoury parts of this city, but at the same time, I have an appreciation for the grunge that appears in larger cities. It's one reason why I loved Brooklyn. I actually dislike it when cities are constantly covering up history. I can't explain why but it takes away from the flavour or feeling of the age of a city. Since Vancouver is constantly expanding/being repaired/repainted/whatever, I feel in ways that we're losing a little bit of history by trying to wipe it all out.

I dunno, it could be the taurus in me that doesn't like change, but I appreciate the unique-ness of a city based on it's less than admirable characteristics. Perhaps I've lived my sheltered suburban life for too long, and am romanticizing the less than desireable parts of the city, but I revel in a large, fast paced city as much as quiet steady surroundings. I can appreciate decay and a weathered environment as well as something brand new and shiny. I might depend on technology to do most of the things I do, but I also enjoy walking along and looking at old brick buildings instead of the pink vinyl siding monstrosities around my house and wondering what those walls have seen, even if it's not pleasant. I suppose that's part of my naiveté, but also the part of me that still looks at things with a sense of wonder.