

Freakonomics: Touring Gangland - cwan
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/touring-gangland/

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ShabbyDoo
"..he'd like to see some early profits send a graffiti "tagger" to art
school."

I'm into photographing abandoned buildings, and the graffiti inside them is
often incredibly artistic. Too bad that there's no publicly-sanctioned space
for these artists to show off their work. Perhaps the illicitness of the
process is part of the allure, but I can't imagine working that hard on
something that would be seen by few. What's also notable is that, at least to
my as a middle-class white guy, most graffiti doesn't seem gang-related. Most
of the low-quality stuff probably is, but the good stuff is often something
incredible like an abstract city skyline.

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Bluem00
You might be interested in the Venice Beach public art walls. They are
repainted every weekend with high quality "graffiti".

<http://www.veniceartwalls.com/>

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Zot95
I can't decide if the idea is demeaning or really demeaning. After reading in
the linked article that the original plans called for the tourists to be
"shot" by local kids with a water pistol and then sold a "I got shot in LA!"
T-shirt, I'm not sure that the tour companies' hearts are in the right
place... I'm leaning towards really demeaning.

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kiujhygfvgbn
Same thing in Belfast. Once it was realised that the 350years of civil war had
all been just a silly misunderstanding they started running tours of the
murals.

Some of them have to have preservation orders slapped on them to stop
developers removing a 30foot high IRA painting to improve house prices. They
may even have to start paying people to repaint them as they weather away.

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wgj
In the sidebar, "Sik" means "cool", where cool has magically been promoted to
a non-slang word. Or at least to the BBC writer's ears.

