Beautiful(?) Decay

Beautiful Decay is a journal featuring graffiti and urban decline.

Once again, I missed a reader comment (have to send a message to blogger help...), in this case, in response to the Borfs being arrested (July 13th: "Borf(s) Nabbed")

Anonymous in Columbia Heights writes:

So has it only occurred to me to go to Great Falls and spray paint "Borf" all over the Tsombikos residence?
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No, but it would be awesome to trash his house and neighborhood, except for the fact that we would be breaking the law too.

Flickr photo by Indy Charlie.

There is the war between the proponents of the "Broken Window Theory" and those who lean towards "freedom of expression" and "art" even if it ends up being anti-community.

I still remember something I read in the 2000 A.D. comic book about 20 years ago about a tagging war between a disaffected adolescent and a robot. (2000 A.D. was the comic book that spawned the pre-Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd.) Neither felt worth much and tagging was a way to develop some sense of identity. The youth was shocked that the robot had the same sense of anomie.

In the city, the Borf(s) are guaranteed that their work will be seen. And even appreciated. Yet one of the first things suburban kids in the same age demographic as the Borfs tend to comment on is the squalor of the city--from litter to graffiti. Do enough people pass by various places in Great Falls (etc.), or would they, driving by at 60 mph, even notice tagging?

Borf-in at Dupont Circle. Flickr photo by Catherine A.

Needless to say, this op-ed in the Washington Post, "We're All Borf In the End: Here's an Empty Image My Generation Can Relate To," and the Borf-in at Dupont Circle (as written up in DCist), do bug the s*** out of me, but a Post reader from (shockingly) Potomac, Maryland seems to have put it best (from the online transcript of an interview with the author of the Outlook piece):

Potomac, Md.: This is all about the biggest piece of juvenile crap to hit The Post since, well, last week.** No one in D.C. gives a darn about some idiot going around defacing and vandalizing public property. And someone who is an adult should know better to falsely glamorize some misguided, slightly psychotic and blatantly stupid vandal whose crap has cost hard-working, normal taxpayers thousands of dollars. It's all a steaming pile of crap. And your "article" is extremely juvenile and lacking in any sense of the real world. It's terrible, actually. Here's a suggestion: Forget stereotypes and generalizations about "twentysomethings"--because here's a wake-up call: I know dozens of professional, adult twentysomethings who thought your article was ridiculous and who think this graffiti vandal should be in jail. In jail. Suggestion number two: grow up. No. 3: You need to go out with a D.C. Public Works Department crew and work for eight hours in 90-plus-degree heat to erase the vandalism from public property caused by this idiot. Then you need to spend time with the businesses and government officials and taxpayers who hate this crap defacing public property. Why don't you do that instead of writing incredibly childish articles glamorizing a vandal? The juvenile nature of some adults these days is downright frightening.

For more photos of the Borf-in, click here , for more Flickr photos on Borf, click here, and here for other Flickr photos on graffiti.

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** I rank the Borf piece in Outlook up there with the whiny travel piece in the Sunday magazine about a year to 18 months ago about a trip to Charleston which was all about the whiny children, spending a few minutes in Charleston, and mostly enjoying the condominium miles from the city, and the hot tub on the premises. Or with the piece from many years ago about how hard it is to piss in the toilet when the electricity's out and you can't see. Sit!

Vandalism in the suburbs.