Anyone who drives on a freeway in the Seattle area has looked up only to see a name or picture spray-painted across a traffic sign.
Your first thought might be a slight sense of surprise and even fleeting admiration how anyone in their right mind could manage to get up to such a precarious perch.
But it is doubtful that your second thought is that this type of "tagging" is just the latest urban art form.
While most consider what is commonly referred to as graffiti a crime, a quiet minority exists that has come to embrace spray-painting pictures as a true art.
"I complete believe that graffiti is a true art form," said Gabe Meier, co-founder of Leftcoastletters.com, a website dedicated to graffiti and street art from Los Angeles to Seattle. "Graffiti might be technically illegal and some may think of it as vandalism, but that doesn't take away from its artistic worth."
The Tubs effect
This debate over the aesthetic value of graffiti appears to have grown in recent years, thanks mainly to the controversy surrounding the Tubs building at the corner of Northeast 47th Street and Roosevelt Way Northeast in the University District.
Vacant for the last three years, the building is now nearly completed covered in graffiti. In fact, it has become a magnet for underground graffiti artists from across the Northwest and beyond who come to the neighborhood to paint a part of the building and gain a fleeting moment of fame.
Building owner Eric Sun, who originally planned to demolish the building, invited artists in 2008 to decorate the structure prior to demolition. But with the economic downturn, Sun's plans were shelved and the Tubs artistic experiment evolved into a massive canvas for tagging and graffiti. Because Sun encouraged the painting in the beginning, the city is powerless to stop it.
The result has been an ongoing debate in the neighborhood about the impact of the Tubs building: Some local business owners are concerned the brightly colored building is scaring customers away, while others think the neighborhood is in a downward spiral. A vocal minority, including Meier, defend the building as a colorful change of pace.
An expensive problem
Whether it is art or vandalism, one thing is for sure: Graffiti is expensive.
In 2009, the City of Seattle spent $1.8 million to clean graffiti off of public property. That doesn't count the millions of dollars spent by private business owners who are responsible for covering graffiti on their own properties. The University of Washington, for instance, spends about $40,000 a year in cleaning up tagging and markings.
Seattle graffiti laws require businesses and private citizens to remove any graffiti from their property within 10 days or receiving official notification from Seattle Public Utilities. If the graffiti is not removed, property owners could face a fine of $5,000.
According to Idris Beauregard, a private-property graffiti-enforcement specialist for Seattle, graffiti is a problem throughout the city, but the two areas of town with the most graffiti tend to be the University District and the city center.
The city's definition of "graffiti" comes down to the marking of property in any form without the property owner's consent. On a yearly basis, the city's graffiti hotline (206-684-7587) receives nearly 7,000 complaints.
One urban myth about graffiti was dispelled by a recent Seattle auditor's report, when city officials found that only 1 percent of the city's identified graffiti was gang-related. On average, about 10 percent of the graffiti identified in large American cities is gang-related in some way.
Beauregard said that the more outrageous a location for a tagging and the longer it stays up, the more respect that tagger will get in the small community of graffiti artists.
"Their agenda is to get the biggest tag they can and be seen by the most people," Beauregard said.
That is why Seattle officials emphasize covering up or getting rid of graffiti as soon as possible. They also tell business owners that the best ways to deter graffiti artists is to keep their properties well-lit, grow ivy or other vegetation to cover open walls and to install security cameras.
"But the best deterrent for taggers is to remove graffiti as soon as possible," Beauregard said. "They will eventually stop tagging that property if the tags are always gone and no one sees them."
Safe outlets
Meier, who does not encourage graffiti on private businesses, said that one thing Tubs points out is that Seattle needs more "free walls" on which street artists can create their own murals. He said, currently, there are only one or two free sites in the entire city where street artists can practice their art. Tubs is not one of them.
He maintains that instead of spending millions of dollars on graffiti prevention and cleanup, Seattle should spend part of that money on creating outlets for street artists that could reduce the amount of tagging and graffiti found on private businesses.
"Why don't we introduce more free walls and art classes for these street artists where they can improve their art form, he said. "There are always going to be bad apples that will vandalize a private business - that is just a fact. But by working with these artists, you can help them create well-done pieces."[[In-content Ad]]
