Interview: Edwin De La Rosa

click to view

Disposed: Colony X Vans in Adelaide

click to view

Top 10 Defgrip posts of 2011

click to view

Scrapbook 2011: Nuno Oliveira

click to view

Premiere: Skavenger

click to view

M.T.A = BUFFED

Art & Design, Culture October, 11 2009
by Nuno Oliveira

The M.T.A “river” tag in Los Angeles is being buffed. This thing is unreal in person…

Anyway, I’m not going to sit here and champion graffiti in this case and I’m sure the state has it’s reasons for worrying about the L.A. “river”, but one would think that they could use the 3.7 million dollars a little more wisely right now. Right??

Watch the video, Let me know what you guys think….

Tags: , , ,
Comments (26)
  • Lee Olsen

    So true that this money could be put to a better person. Covering up grafitti? Come On! You’re hackin at the branches, people! You gotta strike at the root if you want a change. Focus that money other places. You’re just providing a blank canvas, and God bless the fellas that use it as such.

  • http://www.theyea.com matt smith

    weak, much better shit to be spending money on.

  • kyle

    legalize and regulate graffiti and marijuana and our problems would be gone.

  • mike.m.

    and they wonder why the state is bankrupt.

    also, the hell does it have to do with climate change?

  • http://www.whitehouse.com George Bush

    Government?
    Govern-fail!

  • colton

    Dang I wanted to see that in person. That’s not going to stop anything, and it’s going to be way easier to paint an already painted surface than paint on the pours river banks surface, The MTA piece is and was, way better looking than the 100s of tags and burners that are going to cover that fresh spot now. California say bye to more money used to rebuff in the future.

  • http://www.myspace.com/givemuthafuckind Alex

    What a fucking waste.

  • [kts]

    after wasting that money to paint it white, theyll probably attempt to pay people to guard the area now too. so horrible to see so much waste…

  • http://www.jnkfd.com christian hewett

    if they spent that much money just to buff that. they’re going to throw the book at those kids in court.

  • http://www.icontactlife.com Matthew

    Way to get up MTA!

    Waste of fucking money for sure…should of used it to pay some graff artists to kill it – woulda cost less and looked better.

  • robin

    wow. what a sad allocation of resources the state desperately needs.

  • carlito brigante

    los angeles is a a bunch of idiots, the best solution the Army Corps Engineers could come up with is to through some white paint on it, and why did they need so many sherifs there? WTF is wrong with people? You could hire 3 guys at home depot and do the same thing in a day for about $500.

  • Gavin

    It’s quite obviously a ridiculous sum of money to be thrown into a project that isn’t really going to to amount to much.

    I was just trying to think how different the whole situation would have been if, for example, a corporate company had somehow secretly commissioned a graffifti crew to spray a GIANT advertisment in a similar sort of fashion to the M.T.A piece (Sony, IBM, Apple, LG blah blah)… Do you think the state would have welcomed the new addition if there was something in it for them? “Pay us for your advertising space, and we’ll happily forget the fact that what you have done to out beautiful river is essentially large scale graffitti”…

    The clean up project seems terribly pointless to me… Put the money into healthcare or education!

  • Albert

    This is blatant misuse of stimulus money. Besides that, municipalities need to rethink graffiti. The problem is not all graffiti. In my home town of miami, the graffiti along the highways and next to the tri rail tracks is beautiful. A ride to West Palm Beach on the train is like a trip to an art gallery. The problem with graffiti is its use by gangs. Detering this graffiti can be a step towards less gang violence. However, differentiating between tagging to mark territory and graffiti as art can occasionally be difficult. The best we can do is let the taggers but increase the amount of designated walls to encourage artists interested in the medium. Gang violence can be stopped in other ways.

  • Colin

    Get over it, everybody. Jesus fucking Christ.

  • Lucas

    jesus fucking christ 10 million a year on graffiti? they could feed so many starving families with that

  • http://chloescookieblog.com Chloe

    Have you ever read The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell? There’s a section in there where he describes all the crime taking place in NYC (i think it was NYC). He says that once they got the small crimes to go down, such as hopping subway turnstyles and graffiti, the big crimes went away along with it. While covering up graffiti that everyone is used to seeing uses up a huge load of money, it has the potential to bring overall crime down. Anyway, I don’t want to write too much, pick up the book, it’s a really interesting read.

  • Brian

    Wow. 3.7 million for probably about $2000 in paint. wow.
    california wins. what a fuckin waste

  • Ryan

    Stupid.

  • Jason {teamshralp}

    Why don’t they have people who are caught putting down graffiti clean it up. Oh but then those council men wouldn’t have gotten their photo op for cleaning up a part of the city they don’t even live near.

  • http://awkwardwords.wordpress.com tom perry

    Pretty disgusting how smug those assholes are about it.

  • Kyle

    The money could definitely be put to better use, but does anyone besides me think that the MTA tag is just lame? I believe that good graffiti adds a lot to any city. This on the other hand, is just a tag. It’s huge, but it’s still just a tag.

  • Andrew

    painting over a painting! technically it will be same same in the end minus the negative space. no?

  • jack

    to be honest thats pretty impressive.
    how they even managed to paint that is mind bottling in itself.
    However large waste of money is correct oh well places live california will one day be a baren(sp) waste land anyway hahahah

  • Jim

    Gotta keep the sewers clean!

  • Gary Keane

    This is why Im getting out of the ARMY!! cuz fat fucks like that, tell me what to do. they let anybudy in. make up rules as they go. and dont know how to spend money. WTF!! One last thing, that i have got to know. Why is that guy standing in the middle of a river, talking about jobs? it just doenst make anysince? come on guy, who wants to listen to a guy standing in a river? there is nothen down there other then spots to ride…