Rejuvenating San Francisco's Graffiti Debate

The San Francisco city government is working harder than ever to rid the streets of graffiti. Last week a number of city administrators, police officers, homeowners, and more than a few concerned citizens met in Chinatown for the “Anti-Graffiti Street Huddle.” Such a firm title suggests to the populace of San Francisco that the question of local graffiti is not open to discussion. The city will stop at nothing to "beautify" the city. In fact, they are already disseminating their hardheaded position with speculative and poorly researched propaganda videos.



Little might these agitated anti-graffiti huddlers suspect that the value of modern graffiti is a richly debated issue among city dwellers around the world. In fact, it has been for the past thirty years. And millions celebrate the beauty and life illegally placed public markings bring to the street.

Many proponents of graffiti argue for its legitimacy by pointing out the aesthetic qualities of the craft. Graffiti is an art form, they say, and as such should be respected by legal codes as somehow above the ranks of “petty vandalism.” Or perhaps, we can respect graffiti as in tension between vandalism and art.


While I myself agree wholeheartedly that graffiti is an art form, in fact the most compelling and challenging art form in contemporary times, I feel that this argument already takes off on a wrong start. As soon as this “art” position rears its head in forums and discussions the hard liners swoop up a simple logical opposition. In KQED’s forum on the subject in preparation for the huddle Paul Henderson, chief of administration at the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, voices the paradigm syllogism; 1) graffiti is a crime 2) a crime cannot be art 3) graffiti is not art. Simple enough position despite its silliness implying that illegality excludes art.

Endlessly arguing over whether graffiti is or is not an art is not pertinent to convincing public officials and people in general who are set on their aversions to the writing on the wall. We have to dig deeper in bringing to light the causes at the basis of their distaste for the craft. And to do so, perhaps the initial orientation of “is graffiti an art?” can be used as a didactic tool for posing an all more fundamental question. Let's try rejuvenating the graffiti debate.

Why is graffiti a crime anyway? For many, such as our exemplary point of reference, Mr. Henderson, this question may sound ridiculous. Graffiti is a crime insofar as the “vandal” does not have permission to mark the private or publicly owned surface. The legality of publicly placed fixtures and markings comes down to "permission"; for instance, in the admitted case of advertisements. Such legal advertisements bombard the city dweller with visual messages, oftentimes of offensive nature, far more than any illegal markings and murals. These advertisements garner their public permissibility on buildings and buses, subways and streets, billboards and street fixtures by, in essence, buying their access.

All that distinguishes the permissibility of advertisement and the illegality of graffiti is the lack of the latter’s money. With money, an individual is enabled the buying power to access and mark the publicly viewed surfaces under the authority of the private property owners. Hence, the private individuals who have the funds to own property therefore dictate to the public citizenry what they are allowed and not allowed to see in the public streets. The public sphere is therefore reserved for the visual spectacles that oil the productive machine of consumption, marketing cultural experiences and instilling desires for goods and services to the citizenry at large.

Is there not a problematic antagonism in the fact that the free citizenry do not have any direct power over what they see in the public sphere? Why do private individuals own and have full legal discretion over the publicly viewed surfaces of their property? In our current political and
legal climate can we even assume something such as “public space,” which might allow the free expression of the people, actually exists? Why is this not a first amendment issue anyway?


In reflecting upon the consumption of democratic values primarily by the small population rich enough to own property, I always come back to wonder what it is about graffiti they find so offensive? Does the fantastical tag of local adventurer, “Chan”, make us feel attacked and brutalized as we walk by its drippy ink on the wall? Does the cartoonish image of a “Girafa” cut into the deepest recesses of our security with its long, pointy neck? Perhaps the intense movement and complex geometrical balance of a “Revok” mural calls into question the very basis of our bourgeois principles telling us to keep our personal expression where it belongs, in our personal homes or in the sterilized museum.

Some worried citizens may throw up their hands and shout, “but these kids are disrespectful gang members!” While I do not have any statistics to point to, I attest that some graffiti is certainly gang related and aimed towards marking territory, but the larger majority of the art form is dedicated to creative personal expression, the craft of calligraphy, and playful visual interplay with the city streets.

What makes graffiti different than advertisements is that it is a “quality of life” crime, our trusty interlocutor may argue. But does spray can art and illegally placed public installations really disturb or hamper the aesthetic appeal of the city any more than advertisements? In fact, a good portion of the population prefers the free expression of graffiti imagery and calligraphy while most of everyone finds advertisements invasive and abusive. And at least graffiti is not trying to sell you something. All the graffito achieves is suggesting to the viewer that someone out there in the anonymous public streets is alive, and wants to be hard, and is quite concerned with stylizing his or her personal signature.


If we want to start having fruitful debate about graffiti we need to seek out the origins of this worldwide phenomenon. In a globalizing market economy where the gap between rich and poor widens, freedom of expression is becoming more and more subsumed under constant surveillance, and codes of behavior become stricter and increasingly enforced, the booming popularity of graffiti tells us in its urgency something hugely relevant. Graffiti is a symptom of social apparatuses where not everyone feels implicated in the public governance and free expression of the citizenry. Ultimately, to write graffiti is to yearn to affirm one’s individuality in a city where idiosyncrasy is suppressed and voices of the outskirts often unheard.

Instead of spending billions of dollars buffing over the messages left on the walls by these thousands of youth and young adults, perhaps we should invest in the education and social infrastructure to facilitate the empowerment of these neglected voices. Rather than incarcerating people for minor acts of vandalism, we might spend those billions of dollars to catalyze the self-determination of all individuals pushed to the borderlands. And we may have the funds to help inform the free expression of the many personalities yearning desperately to cultivate themselves.