02 July 2009

Graffiti! The armpit of culture.

The bus I rode home in tonight was the most graffiti'd I'd ever seen, including such gems as

I AM AN DRUG ADICCT AND I AM PROUD

SXE = LIFE, DXA = DEATH

and
Jonathan Pollard is a Zionist dog (this last one in Hebrew)

Most of them were sports related:

Hapo'al is a whore

Maccabbi Haifa is a whore

Maccabbi TA is a whore

... all written by one guy, presumably a fan of Beitar Jerusalem (soccer).

But then at a certain point the artist (clearly the same one) goes with a more political (well, racist) message.

Gaza is a whore

and
A Jew is a spirit
An Arab is a son of a whore
Death to Arabs!

Sports loyalty and nationalism? It seems plausible that they spring from the same graffiti-ing place inside of us.

By the way, "spirit" (נשמה) colloquially means "pretty decent person" and you can use it to address people with cool respect, in much the way you'd use "dude" or "man" in English. The first two lines of that little triplet rhyme, and have a /x/x/x/ prosodic meter, so that they practically chant themselves.

On the way to the bus, I saw (in English)

HOMOSEXUALS IS DANGEROUS FOR CHILDREN

Please take a moment to appreciate the artist's heartwarming concern for the well-being of children. Which reminds me, I have two sets of pride-march photos to post. I'll put them on the intenet just as soon as I get them off my camera!

And just to avoid being too depressing, I'll end with the night's cutest bus graffito, which was written close to the one that links the mysterious mysterious entities SXE and DXA to life and death. It laments the tragedy of unrecognized generosity:

I brought you a shnitzel but you did not want it.

3 comments:

  1. SXE is presumably sXe, or straightedge. DXA is presumably, therefore, dXa, which I can only assume is "drug addict".

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  2. Not quite the same thing, but just yesterday I saw a building with "Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me Uman" painted on the side. (It was in the very very Orthodox part of LA - about two blocks from Christian's apartment!)

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  3. I think it is a tragedy to refuse a shnitzel.

    Pondering a bit further, and inspired by commento #2, I suggest the following graffiti:
    Sh Shni Shnitz Shnitzel Me Imma

    The Abbs

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