November 04, 2005

Head Like a Hat Rack Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman thinks graffiti artists' thumbs should be amputated on live TV. Street art blog Wooster Collective suggests that thumb photos with appropriate messages should be sent to them to be forwarded to hizzonner.
posted by es el Queso 18 years ago
  • Or better yet, gouge their eyes out! Wrap their intestines around a tree! Chop them up into little cubes and feed them to their mothers! Damn, I've got to get into politics.
  • Goodman said the city has a beautiful highway landscaping project and "these punks come along and deface it" While I'm amused that this guy finds highway projects "beautiful", there's a big difference between most graffiti and the street art that Wooster Collective represents.
  • You can't tar all graffiti artists with the same brush. Goodman makes no distinction between the lifted-dog-leg approach of the great unwashed masses of taggers and the finer artists who do large-scale, planned murals.
  • The ugly and the garish aren't welcome in Las Vegas? That makes sense.
  • Live tv amputations -- am I going to need cable for that? What setting to I need to put my V-chip to? Somebody shows a nip on tv and everybody goes nuts. Live-action Freudian castration imagery, no problem. Scheezus...
  • So, only bad graffiti artists deserve to have their thumbs ripped off. Glad that's settled.
  • Writing FUCK on an overpass doesn't make you an artist.
  • And, obviously, nobody deserves to have their thumbs ripped off.
  • Okay, so non-artists who write "FUCK" on overpasses deserve to have their thumbs torn off.
  • Dammit, rocket88, now you've really thrown a wrench in things!
  • SOMEBODY deserves to have their thumbs ripped off! And I'm going to make it my solemn duty to find that person.
  • Looks like I picked a good week to quit hitchhiking.
  • So, if I understand you correctly, you mean to say that you're not using your thumb? Is that right? I wouldn't want to jump to a conclusion here...
  • I suggest Roger Ebert.
  • Tag it and move on.
  • Considering his background, perhaps it's not that surprising. I don't suppose he'd also be in favor of cutting out the tongues of rich old white guys who vandalize the very air by spouting their ugly oral diarrhea, would he?
  • Hanging's too good for em. Burning's too good for em! They should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!
  • I think there's a difference between graffiti and tagging. The former seems like a guerilla art form, and the latter is just gangpuke. There are some wonderfully talented graffitists where I live; some got their start by tagging railway cars. (I find this interesting; I have heard that one mark of a good artist is to be able to leave an impressive work on a car while it is slowly moving through the station. Maybe that's just lore.) Sending your art on to far-flung destinations seems popular here.
  • Most of them use the index finger to activate the spray paint. What is this "thumb" shit?
  • grab an aerosol can and spray it without using your thumb, stirfry...
  • Couldn't we have a more humane punishment? Perhaps spray-painting Dork or Loozer on their foreheads?
  • tagging and piecing are part of the same phenomenon. even the most established graf artists still tag. it's not something you can eradicate, but it is something that, if you use a creative approach (one which is willing to engage with the rules and concerns of BOTH sides without using some stupid zero tolerance attitude) you can contain and keep from getting out of control. kind of like terrorism. ha. ha. ha. instead of taking a myopic 'cut their thumbs off' approach it might be wiser to understand what they are doing and why, and THEN try to work out a compromise.