14. Graffiti

Graffiti (from the Italian, for scribbling) occurs in two different categories here on the south side. The first is true scribbling--gang tags and wannabe gang tags. We walked out of the house one day to find Mike's car tagged with a sharpie marker, reading "Big Ass." I didn't take it personally. Bus stops, mailboxes, newspaper vending boxes (what do you call those things?), billboards, and occasionally something more intricate on the side of an abandoned building.

When one happens close to home (like my car), I report it to our local precinct, and sometimes I get a call from the gang taskforce. Big Ass, by the way, isn't any known mover or shaker--a wannabe. For now. Other times, like in 2000 when the back building on the corner was cleared of its squatters and drug dealers, it does mean something--the sidewalk running in front of the building was spray-painted with the gang equivalent of a change of address form.

The other graffiti is anarchist. Yes, anarchists. They spray-paint slogans. Cryptic slogans like "The underground railroad is still running" with a huge question mark below it. Or, on a boarded up building at Lafayette and Compton: "Things are still not equal," with the same punctuation. The standard A in a circle symbol. They interest me in a way that the taggers do not. For instance, they seem to be trying to communicate with ME, not with other anarchists (or, at least, they aren't writing in code). I may not know exactly what they mean most of the time, but when they write "Die yuppie scum" I sure do. Methinks they perchance would not like me.