Today, after our long bus ride and before we reached Central Park, we had a “red bus discussion” about Graffiti. Now you may be asking, “What does grafitti have to do with the Freedom tour?” Well, as you may know, New York City has lots of graffiti. Some believe it is art, others believe it is vandalism. Both cases can be true seeing as with your perception it could be art or it could be vandalism. There was a time, not too long ago, where graffiti covered the City of New York. At that time it was too much and too “ugly” etc, so the city took charge to stop the graffiti. It took lots of time and effort, but graffiti is now a more controlled art.
There are three basic types of graffiti. A tag is like a signature. It is usually one color and quite simple. These are found all over the place, and not just in New York City. Even in Brunswick there are tags. The next type of graffiti is a bit more complex. It is called a throw-up. Throw-ups having nothing to do with being sick (for all the people wondering). Throw-ups have two-five colors (most of the time) and usually form a simple picture or phrase. The final type of graffiti is a piece. Piece is short for Master Piece. Pieces as you may have guessed are very complex, typically three dimensional, loads of color and are really fun too look at (not saying that the others aren't).
One of the leaders on our bus asked if a few of us could draw a piece of graffiti to put on the blog. I volunteered, and below (wherever Phil puts it) is a quick sketch of graffiti I put together on the bus ride through NYC. All throughout our tour we spotted many types of graffiti. This afternoon I spotted 6 pieces, 14 Throw-ups, and lots of tags. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this interesting tidbit on graffiti in NYC.
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