Last Wednesday I happenened to be at the Truckee, CA depot (along the Union Pacific route over Donner Summit) when an entire train of several dozen modern refrigerator cars passed. Every single car had graffiti and outlaw art covering their entire lengths three feet high. That got me to wondering.
According to the AAR as of January 1, 2008, class I railroads owned 460,172 railroad cars, other railroads had 120,463 cars, and car companies and shippers had 805,074 cars. That is a total of 1,385,719 cars.
Assuming an average car length of 50 feet and outlaw art 3 feet high on each car, all those railroad cars offer outlaw artists a canvas totaling 415,715,700 square feet. That is approximately 15 square miles of potential canvas.
The next question is: how many hours a year does it take for outlaw artists to keep the entire United States rolling stock painted? Are there some muralists out there who can help develop a calculation? And what is the average service life of a railroad car nowadays? Assuming each retired car is replaced, we can then determine how much new “canvas” becomes available each year to calculate the annual workload of these outlaw artists.
I suspect outlaws spent up to a million hours a year tagging the cars. Where the heck were the railroad detectives and watchmen? Probably chasing camera-equipped train buffs.
Well, you have to consider that a lot of railroad cars spend much of their time in remote, unobserved locations, frequently located in the more run-down parts of town. There are probably a lot of such places where these guys can operate unobserved, but are not places where railfans would like to be.
A friend of mine used to work in a hospital, whose rear door faced a Santa Fe yard in Chicago. The hospital installed a security camera to protect this door. The hospital security people soon were watching the local hoods breaking into boxcars and plundering their contents.
Needless to say, the security people called the police.
Hey–they have more rights than we do–but then here is a question. Given the paranoia crowd that told us don’t let your kids do what we used to do–normal things --what do you expect them to do? We close off school grounds after hours–letting the druggies do their thing, we close down after school programs that existed shutting down even more positive possibilities, and then we have the 34 year old infantile running around because we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s wittle feelings-----coocoo coocoo
who can support a culture that writes on walls??? guess they have an identity crisis. oh well, better lighten up a bit. don’t want to offend those who vandalize the entire country.
While taggers for the most part can go away, as they just do nothing but destroy things, some of the artists, are just that. Fantastic art, and its amazing how much control they have with a spray bottle. The fact that some people categorize them as criminals, and refuse to give them a chance, is why they are on the streets as artists, instead of where they should be, ie in an art gallery, or doing something that they can put their very high creative skills to use. I am not a graffiti artist (I am about as inclined to draw as a retarded ferret), but rest assured, I love seeing self expression. If you keep them out of galleries, and prevent them from doing it in public, where do they go?
maybe they can come over to your place and express themselves on your property. i would be inclined to think of them not as artists, but as moving targets. they might be amazed with the control i have with something much louder than a spray bottle.
I get the distinct impression that the graffitti painting these guys do is a sideline to, and a product of, the perpetrators’ other anti-social activities.
Very true of the ‘taggers,’ who are ‘marking’ their gang’s turf (rather like a hunting carnivore ‘spraying’ the boundaries of its territory.)
Not necessarily true of the ‘muralists,’ who create very nice artwork on totally inappropriate canvases.
Too bad we can’t gather up and incarcerate the former while providing the latter with more apprpriate venues. However, the law doesn’t make the distinction I just made.
Nor should the law make the distinction that You just made Chuck. They ARE Criminals VANDALIZING that which does not belong to them. If it Really is ART, why don’t you see it on THEIR OWN HOMES, that should be a plenty large enough canvas, and it wouldn’t be ILLEGAL. It would also be much more convinient, walk out the door, and go to work, need to potty? Hey you’re right there no problem, grab a soda, or make lunch too. And they could “APPRECIATE” their “ART” whenever they wanted. But You DON’T see them applying their “ART” to their own homes too often now do you? maybe they don’t find their own “ART” any more appealing to look at then the rest of us do.
This thread, like almost every thread about graffitti, is starting down the slippery slope towards an arguement we don’t want or need here on the forums. Time to move on.