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The carburettor just needs a bit of fine tuning sir...
How many unfinished restoration project adverts do you see that in ?
( In other words, i'm pig sick of trying to sort out that niggling problem ! )
Bailey is not doing well today. Yesterday he had a life-threatening seizure. He had a mild seizure two months ago, but never has had a problem with this before that. After 24 hours in Emergency, he is home. But Bailey has some pretty severe neurological deficits resulting from this seizure. The doctor says that if these don't resolve within 3-5 days, they will be permanent. Please say a little prayer for Bailey. He is only seven years old. Thanks, Flickr friends and Happy Holidays to everyone. Hug the pups.
UPDATE 12/25 It's hard to tell if Bailey's problems are from the heavy drug or from damage sustained from a very prolonged seizure. Basically he's like a drunken sailor, and we can't tell how much he can see, so I'm sleeping on the floor with him at night. Thank you all so much for your kindness and good wishes. Your words mean so much to me right now.
UPDATE 12/26/08 We have a diagnosis and it's a very poor prognosis. Bailey is in the hospital and more will be decided in the next couple of days. Give your dogs big hugs tonight - life is unpredictable.
UPDATE: 12/28/08 Bailey passed away today. He tried very hard, but the illness was just too much for him. See this page:
www.flickr.com/photos/loveyourdog/3146330430/
This photo was taken on 12/22 when all was well.
(PS I have had to be away from Flickr off and on lately, but you are never far from my thoughts. I'll always be back and will do my best to view and comment on your fantastic photos.)
yesterday was a really windy day but i decided to find some poppies to capture them... and i solved this windy problem with series-shots... i made more then 800 exposure, and cca. 200 left...:)
No problems from CTA workers tonight as the tripod, camera and I went out to get another stacked shot of the Metra. While I like the earlier shot "Permit Required" better than this one, I think I've come up with a new way to show motion and details in the same shot.
My nephew Marian (4) has a problem. The beer cap is too tough for him. You can guess from his expression how hard is he pushing to open the bottle of Budweiser. But since he is rather stubborn he finally made it. Yes, "if you want you can". Taken with Zuiko OM 50/1,8, aperture either 1,8 or 2, ambient light, cropped in photoshop.
Kapunda.
Six years after the founding of the colony, SA was producing almost no wheat and the government was near bankruptcy. Governor Gawler had run up huge debts that the SA Company and the British government were unwilling to pay. Governor Grey arrived to face these problems but the discovery of commercial quantities of copper at Kapunda saved the state. Captain Charles Bagot of Koonunga Station discovered the copper and conferred with Francis Dutton of Anlaby station who had also discovered copper. They kept the news secret whilst they applied for 80 acres of land to be surveyed which they then bought at auction. Thus the two purchased the Kapunda copper mine with Bagot owning 75% and Dutton 25%. The first samples were assayed and averaged 23% pure copper, an extremely high rate for any mine. Cornish miners were secured for the mining jobs and mining began in January of 1843. The first shipment of copper reached England in 1845 and the royalties from the sales revived the states flagging economy. The first group of three blocks of miners cottages owned by the mine were built in 1845 really marking the beginning of the town. They were near the Dutton chimney stack and whim. Over the next thirty five years the mine delivered about £1,000,000 of wealth and the township of Kapunda grew quickly to become a major SA town. Dutton sold his share of the mine in 1846 for a huge sum (£16,000) which allowed him to invest in the even wealthier Burra copper mine. Bagot became the major shareholder but sold out to an English company within a couple of years although he maintained financial involvement with the mine until 1859. He returned to Adelaide and built Nurney House North Adelaide. His younger son Edward lived on in the district and established a stock agent and wool handling business when the railway reached Kapunda in 1860. This business eventually merged into Elder Smiths Goldsborough Mort. Edward Bagot was an important pastoralist with several stations in the far north of SA and a boiling down works at Thebarton.
William Oldham became the mine superintendant in 1848, as well as the Congregational minister, the town surveyor, the local post master and a local businessman. To many he is considered the “father” of Kapunda! From 1866 Captain Osborne succeeded William Oldham as the mine superintendent until the mine closed in 1878. At first copper was carted to Port Adelaide by bullock dray, a six day journey. It was then exported to Wales for smelting. Soon the Welsh joined the Cornish in Kapunda and smelting operations began in the town in 1849. In 1851 three hundred men, including woodcutters were employed in the smelting works. The town had taken its name from an Aboriginal word “cappie oonda” which means spring. There were several mines with different names on the site.
In 1850 the Cornish miners built the still impressive Dutton chimney which draw the draft from the Buhl Enginehouse furnaces via a lined tunnel up into the air through the chimney stack. The Cornish traditionally built round chimney stacks and the Welsh built square chimney stacks. The Buhl pump house drew water out of the main shaft which was up to 360 feet deep. Then in 1861-62 a second winding house to haul up copper ore was built further up the hill but for some strange reason it was named the Buhl Winding house although it never contained a Buhl engine. A significant part of the Buhl Winding House ruins remain on the site. Although the first mining was simple open cut mining undertaken by miners and tributers (who were paid according to how much ore they extracted), deep shafts were soon needed to reach the underground lodes of ore. The deepest shafts sunk were 150 m (490ft) and mining operations were complex. By 1861 the mine employed 340 men and boys. Just two years later mining operations were scaled down (Moonta Mine had begun by that time) and the mine reverted to open cut mining. Low grade ore was mined until 1878, the year after the Burra mine closed. Some tribute work continued in the mine until 1912.
The original private township was called North Kapunda and it was laid out by the North Kapunda Mining Company in 1846 although many miners were living on the lands of the Dutton copper mine before that time. These early miners squatted on land even if they built a hut or cottage on it. In 1849 the government belatedly surveyed a town which it called Victoria and then Kapunda. Look at a map of Kapunda today and you can see this government town delineated by South, North, and West terraces. This is the northern half of today’s Kapunda where the old primary school is located. Government facilities followed soon after the founding of the mining town with the police station, now a private residence being erected in 1852. Later in 1866 the impressive Court House was built adjacent to the police station still in the private township of the Kapunda Mining Company. The early Congregational Church of 1857 was also built on land obtained from the Kapunda Mining Company. The town prospered greatly once the government railway arrived in 1860. It then became the terminus for the bullock drays carting copper ore from Burra. It was during the 1860s and 1870s that many of the fine buildings in the town were erected. At this time Kapunda was larger than Gawler and Glenelg and in 1850 Kapunda was larger than Brisbane! It was the first town in SA with gas street lighting from around 1870. Kapunda also had its own newspaper from 1864 when the Kapunda Herald was established. Andrew Thomson of Osborne House bought the newspaper later that year. The paper still operates today as the Barossa and Light Herald (from 1908) and is the largest circulating regional weekly newspaper. Thomson also ran the general store, which is now the information centre.
Once the mine closed in 1878 the town focused on its agricultural hinterland and Sir Sidney Kidman played a major role in developing the town. He regularly held horse and cattle auctions behind the North Kapunda Hotel in the main street and by the time of his death in 1935 he owned or had a financial interest in 68 large properties which covered over 100,000 square miles ( 64 million acres or 259,000 square kms ) of Australia. Victoria is only 227,000 square kms! Kidman donated his home to the education department in 1921 for it to become Kapunda High School- one of the first high schools outside of Adelaide. In 1876 a local Scot, Alexander Greenshields built a mansion for £4,000 which he called Lanark after his birthplace in Scotland. He was a wealthy Kapunda draper and store owner. Sir Sidney Kidman bought the house around 1897 and renamed it Eringa. A major fire destroyed the roof of Eringa in 1902 and the Art Nouveau style Marseille tile roof replaced the original roof. The western wing was also added at this time and if you get to go inside you can see the delightful Art Nouveau ceiling motifs and the leadlight windows featuring bull rushes. When Sidney and his wife Bel moved to Adelaide they purchased a house at 76 Northgate Street Unley Park which they also named Eringa. Sir Sidney Kidman died here in 1935 and was buried nearby in the Mitcham cemetery. The Kidman Empire was inherited by his son Walter and other family members. Sir Sidney Kidman was mourned by people around the world and the almost illiterate 13 year who set about to create a pastoral empire on his own died an extremely wealthy man. Kidman was knighted partly for his generosity and bequests to the Inland Mission, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and other charities. During World War One he had also donated hundreds of horses, produce, especially beef and other materials to the Australian war effort including two fighter airplanes. As a generous employer it was not surprising that his employees put on a rodeo party for his 75th birthday in 1932 in the Adelaide Parklands. 60,000 people attended! Kidman was meant to be as comfortable talking to British royalty as to his stockmen. Although the Kidman properties are only half what they used to be in size they are for sale for round $350 million in 2015.
Sir Montague( or Montagu) Chapman, Third Baronet of Westmeath near Dublin Ireland, used a loop hole in the Special Survey regulations of 1839 and selected his 4,000 acres for £4,000 in different areas. He took 800 acres at Koonunga near Kapunda; 500 acres at Kapunda; 500 acres near Waterloo and Marrabel; and later in 1842 he selected a further 2,200 acres between the Little Para River and Dry Creek at what is now Mawson Lakes, Salisbury and Cross Keys. At Killua Castle in Ireland he had 9,000 acres and hundreds of tenant farmers. He wanted to do the same in SA. In 1840 he sent out Captain Charles Bagot from Ireland with his family and 224 Irish immigrants to settle his, and Bagot’s lands at Kapunda and Koonunga with Irish labourers and tenants. Then in 1842 he sailed out to SA with 120 Irish tenant farmers who he installed on his lands at Cross Keys. Sir Montague Chapman returned to Ireland the next year. Then in 1847 he sent out with a further 214 Irish immigrants to be tenant farmers on his Cross Key lands. They came out on the ships named Trafalgar and Aboukir. Sir Montague Chapman lived in Ireland not SA but returned to his SA estates in 1852 and drowned at sea in 1853 off Portland when returning to SA from Sydney. His brother Benjamin inherited the SA lands and estates. The lasting effect of Sir Montague Chapmans tenant farming ideas was a large number of Irish Catholics around the Salisbury and Kapunda districts. Many of these immigrants soon became independent landowners themselves. These early Irish Catholic’s had the fourth Catholic Church in SA built at Koonunga. But in 1862 they opened a church in Kapunda itself named St Rose of Lima which was completed in 1866. This church was replaced with the current fine red brick Romanesque style St Rose’s Church which was built in 1938. The original church was demolished in 1946. Beside the church is a bluestone church office, and behind it is a parish hall built in 1909. It replaced an earlier 1865 parish hall. Beyond that is the fine convent built in 1892. This early hall was used as a Catholic school run by the Sisters of St Joseph. When the Dominican sister took over the school they had a new two storey convent built. It is now a private residence. Imprisoned paedophile magistrate Peter Liddy owned this former convent for some years.
Apart from the Dutton family, Captain Bagot and Sir Sidney Kidman, Kapunda was also home to Ellen Benham (1871-1917.) She was the daughter of a Kapunda solicitor and was educated in the town. She obtained a Bachelor of Science from the University of Adelaide in 1889 and returned to Kapunda as a teacher. In 1901 she became the first female lecturer employed by the University of Adelaide, and later in 1912 she purchased her own school – Walford Grammar School for Girls. She is buried in the Kapunda cemetery. Sir Jenkin Coles a state parliamentarian who served for 33 years lived in Kapunda for most of his life. In the early days the town’s water supply came from the Light River which flows through the town. Electricity was not turned on until 1925. One of many symbols of its early growth as an urban centre was the establishment of the Kapunda Horticultural Society and Annual Show in 1857. Kapunda is 800 feet or 245 m above sea level, with a population of around 3,000 people today and it has an average annual rainfall of 500mm or 19.6 inches.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Westland Whirlwind was a British heavy fighter developed by Westland Aircraft. It was the Royal Air Force's first single-seat, twin-engine, cannon-armed fighter, and a contemporary of the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane.
A problem for designers in the 1930s was that most agile combat aircraft were generally small. These aircraft had limited fuel storage and only enough flying range for defensive operations, and their armament was relatively light, too. A multi-engine fighter appeared to be the best solution to the problem of range, but a fighter large enough to carry an increased fuel load might be too unwieldy to engage successfully in close combat. Germany and the United States pressed ahead with their design programs, resulting in the Messerschmitt Bf 110 and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
The Westland Whirlwind was one of the British answers to more range and firepower, and the first Whirlwind prototype (L6844) flew on 11 October 1938. Construction had been delayed chiefly due to some new features and also to the late delivery of the original Peregrine engines. The Whirlwind was of all-metal construction, with flush riveting, and featuring magnesium skinning on the rear fuselage. The control surface arrangement was conventional, with large one-piece Fowler flaps inboard and an aileron outboard on each wing, with the rear end of the engine nacelles hinging with the flaps; elevators; and a two-piece rudder, split to permit movement above and below the tail plane. Slats had been fitted on the outer wings at the outset as a stall protection measure, but they were soon locked down, having been implicated in an accident.
Service trials were carried out at Martlesham Heath, where the new type exhibited excellent handling and was very easy to fly at all speeds. It was one of the fastest aircraft in service when it flew in the late 1930s, and was much more heavily armed than any other fighter, toting four 20mm cannons.
However, protracted development problems with its Rolls-Royce Peregrine engines delayed the entire project. The combat radius also turned out to be rather short (only 300 miles), and the landing speed was relatively high, which hampered the type's utility. The major role for the Whirlwinds, however, became low-level attack, flying cross-channel "Rhubarb" sweeps against ground targets and "Roadstead" attacks against shipping.
Time went by and worked against the Whirlwind, though: By 1940, the Supermarine Spitfire was mounting 20 mm cannons as well, so the "cannon-armed" requirement was already met by lighter and simpler aircraft. Furthermore, the role of an escort fighter was becoming less important by this time, as RAF Bomber Command turned to night bomber missions.
The main qualities the RAF was looking for now in a twin-engine fighter were range and carrying capacity, e .g. to allow the large radar apparatus of the time to be carried as a night fighter. Concerning these requirements, the bigger Bristol Beaufighter and the fast De Havilland Mosquito could perform just as well as or even better than the Whirlwind.
Anyway, the Whirlwind's potential had not been fully exploited yet, and it was decided to adapt it to new roles and specialized duties, which would exploit its good low altitude handling. Such an opportunity arose when Allied Forces prepared for Operation Torch (initially called Operation Gymnast) in 1942, the British-United States invasion of French North Africa: the somewhat outdated aircraft was retrofitted for a new task as a dedicated tank hunter.
Background was the experience with the Hawker Hurricane Mk. IID, which had become operational at that time. The Mk IIDs were dedicated to ground support, where it was quickly learned that destroying German tanks was difficult; the Hurricanes’ standard 20mm cannons (the same the Whirlwind fighter originally carried) did not have the performance to punch through Gerrnan tanks’ armor, and bombing small tank target successfully was almost impossible.
The solution was to equip aircraft with 2 pounder (40 mm) cannon in a pod under each wing, reducing the other armament to a single Browning in each wing loaded with tracers for aiming purposes.
This equipment was originally tested on a converted Mk IIB in late 1941, and proved to be successful. A new-build Hurricane version of what was known as the Mk IID started in 1942, which, beyond the modified armament, also included additional armor for the pilot, radiator and engine. The aircraft were initially supplied with a pair of Rolls-Royce 'BF' ('Belt-Fed') guns and carried 12 rounds, but this was soon changed to the 40 mm (1.57 in) Vickers S gun with 15 rounds. The weight of the guns and armor protection had a detrimental effect on the aircraft's performance, though, and for the African environment it was feared that the liquid-cooled Merlin engine was too complicated and would hardly cope with the higher ambient temperatures.
A fallback option was needed, and the Whirlwind appeared to be a sound basis – even though the troublesome Peregrine engines were rejected. In a hurry, a Whirlwind Mk. I (P7102) was modified to carry a pair of 40 mm guns, but this time in the lower nose. Compared with the Hurricane’s wing-mounted pods the Whirlwind could carry a slightly bigger load of ammunition (20 RPG). For aiming purposes and against soft targets, a pair of 0.303" (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns with tracer ammunition was mounted above them.
In order to make the aircraft more resilient to the North-African temperatures and against damage, the Whirlwind's touchy Peregrines were replaced by a pair of Bristol Taurus radial engines under relatively narrow cowlings. The engine nacelles had to be widened accordingly, and the Peregrines’ former radiator intakes and installations in the wing roots were removed and simply faired over. Similar to the Hurricane Mk. IID, additional armor plating was added around the cockpit and the engines, raising overall weight.
Flight and weapon tests were conducted in early 1942. While the radial-powered Whirlwind was not as nimble and fast as the original, Peregrine-powered fighter anymore, the aircraft proved to be a stable weapon platform and fully suitable for the ground attack role. Due to its characteristic new nose with the two protruding gun barrels and their separate fairings, the machine was quickly nicknamed “Walrus” and “Buck teeth Whirlwind”.
For operation Torch and as a field test, a total of eleven Whirlwind Mk. Is were converted to Mk. Ic standard. The machines received new serials and were allocated to RAF No. 73 Squadron, which was preparing for deployment to Northern Africa and the Middle East after having been engaged in the Battle of Britain.
The squadron's Whirlwinds and Hurricanes (including some cannon-armed Mk. IIDs, too) were shipped to Takoradi on the Gold Coast onboard HMS Furious, and were then flown in stages across Africa to Egypt.
No. 73 Squadron took part in the series of campaigns in the Western Desert and Tunisia, helping cover the supply routes to Tobruk and taking part in various ground-attack operations.
Both types undertook an anti-tank role in limited numbers during the North African campaign where, provided enemy flak and fighters were absent, they proved accurate and highly effective, not only against armored vehicles but all kinds of motorized transport.
The converted Whirlwinds proved, thanks to their robust engines, to be very reliable and had a better operational status than the Hurricanes. The second engine boosted the pilots' confidence. In direct comparison, the cannon-armed Whirlwind proved to be a better weapon platform than the Hurricane – mainly because the heavy guns were mounted closer to the aircraft’s longitudinal axis. Both aiming and accuracy were better than the Hurricanes’ wing-mounted weapons.
Nevertheless, there were several drawbacks: the Whirlwind’s two engines meant that more service hours had to be spent on them for maintenance, binding ground crew capacities. This was very inconvenient during the highly mobile Northern Africa campaign. Additionally, the Whirlwind's higher fuel consumption and the limited fuel provisions in the Northern African theatre of operations with dispersed and improvised airfields eventually meant that, despite positive results, no further machines were converted. The high landing speed also persisted, so that operations were hazardous.
Eventually the Hurricane Mk IID was adopted for the tank hunter role, with ensuing series production, since it was regarded as the more versatile and also more common type.
The radial-powered Whirlwind Mk. Ic remained operational with No. 73 Squadron until June 1943, when the squadron converted to the Spitfire and moved from Northern Africa to Italy in October. Until then, only six Whirlwinds had remained airworthy.
General characteristics:
Crew: One pilot
Length: 31 ft 7 1/4 in (9,65 m)
Wingspan: 45 ft 0 in (13.72 m)
Height: 11 ft 0 in (3.35 m)
Wing area: 250 ft² (23.2 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 23017-08
Empty weight: 9,400 lb (4,267 kg)
Loaded weight: 12,158 lb (5,520 kg)
Max. take-off weight: 13,120 lb (5,946 kg)
Powerplant:
2× Bristol Taurus II 14-Cylinder sleeve valve radial engines, 1,015 hp (760 kW) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 400 mph (644 km/h) at 15.000 ft (4.570 m)
Stall speed: 95 mph (83 knots, 153 km/h) with flaps down
Range: 800 mi (696 nmi, 1.288 km)
Service ceiling: 33.500 ft (10.970 m)
Armament:
2x belt-fed two pounder (1.57 in/40 mm) Vickers S cannon, 20 RPG each
2x 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns, 500 RPG (typically armed with tracer rounds)
Option for 2x 250 lbs (115 kg) or 500 lbs (230 kg) bombs under the outer wings
The kit and its assembly
My third whiffed Westland Whirlwind - I must say that this rather obscure aircraft type has some serious potential for mods and fictional uses. The inspiration for this radial-powered variant originally came from a profile drawing of fellow modeler and illustrator FrancLab at flickr.com, who had drawn more than twenty(!) fictional Whirlwinds (check this: www.flickr.com/photos/franclab/16724098644/in/faves-14802...), including one with radial engines and in RAF Tropical Scheme colors.
The kit is, again, the vintage Airfix offering. Modifications center around the engines and the nose section, the rest remained basically OOB.
I already had to learn with my first Whirlwind conversion that mounting bigger engines on this compact aircraft is not easy, and radials, with their bigger diameter and consequentially more voluminous nacelles, would be a challenge from the design perspective.
Figuring out a solution that would be feasible and not make the sleek Whirlwind look like Popeye was not easy. I considered the transplantation of complete engine nacelles from a Matchbox Bristol Beaufighter, but eventually refrained from this idea because everything would be at least one size too big... a mistake I had done before, with very mixed results.
After several trials, I settled on a compromise, because I could not find a satisfactory 'British' solution, at least in my spares vault: the implantation of "foreign" material in the form of cowlings and nacelles from an Airfix Mitsubishi Ki-46.
The transplantation started with the removal of the original Peregrine engine nacelles from the lower wing section and gluing these to the upper half, which remained intact. Then the Ki-46’s lower nacelle half, cut away from the model’s wing in a similar fashion, was grafted onto the Whirlwind’s lower wing, ensuring that the landing gear attachment points would match with the new openings. This stunt worked very well!
As a final step, the upper Ki-46 engine nacelle half was placed on top of the Whirlwind wings’ upper side, and the radial engines were used as a ruler for the overall fit. In the end, the modified nacelles sit perfectly in place, and the original distance between the propellers as well as the landing gear’s track width could be maintained, so that the change is rather subtle.
Propellers and spinners were taken from the Airfix Whirlwind, and in order to mount them into the deep and "hollow" Ki-46 cowlings I inserted a styrene tube as a simple adapter, which would also hold the added metal axis' behind the propellers. The parts fit snuggly together.
Details like the exhaust pipes and the carburetor intakes were scratched from sprue material. The landing gear is OOB, but I had to re-create the covers from sheet material since I could only find a single pair of doors from the Ki-46 kit. On the other side, this had the benefit that the material is much thinner.
The original radiator intake slits were closed with putty and blended into the wing’s leading edge.The respective outlets on the trailing edge were sanded away.
For the guns in the nose I added two long, shallow fairings (actually drop tank halves from an Airfix G.91) and re-located the original oils cooler and gun camera fairings under the wing roots.
The original gun mounts were covered with putty, and new openings for the modified armament drilled into the re-sculpted nose section. The 2-pounders' and machine gun barrels are hollow steel needles of different diameters.
Painting and markings:
Staying somewhat true to FrancLab's profile and the North Africa theatre of operations, the paint scheme was more or less pre-defined. The Tropical scheme is a rather unusual look on this sleek aircraft, but works very well!
The standard RAF camouflage pattern for the Whirlwind was retained, but the European colors replaced with Dark Earth (Humbrol 29) and Middle Stone (ModelMaster 2052, the best representation of the tone I could find so far). The undersides were painted with ModelMaster 2055 (US Navy Blue Grey) as an alternative to RAF Azure and Mediterranean Blue.
Interior surfaces were painted with Cockpit Green (Humbrol 78) and slightly dry-brushed with light grey.
The red spinners are typical Desert Force markings, and I added yellow ID markings to the outer wings’ leading edges (created from generic decal sheet). Not certain how authentic this is for Northern Africa, since the Hurricanes did not carry these markings – but the Spitfires did, as well as the few leftover Whirlwinds over Continental Europe? At least, it’s a colorful detail.
Even though many Hurricanes of 73 Squadron in Northern Africa carried the squadron’s colorful pre-war marking on the flanks instead of a two-letter code, I eventually rejected this option. IMHO it might have been simply too much for this whiffy aircraft?
Roundels and markings were puzzled together from the scrap box, the code letters are single digits from Xtradecal aftermarket sheets. I mixed medium sea grey and dull red letters – a practice frequently seen on Northern Africa aircraft (which also frequently did not carry squadron codes at all) in order to improve readability. The serial was puzzled together, too, using a free serial slot according to ukserials.com.
As another individual touch I added a small nose art motif under the cockpit: a Bugs Bunny cartoon toting a shotgun (actually from a P-51 from the late war Pacific TO), as an interpretation of the “Buck teeth” nickname for the aircraft.
Finally, the model was weathered, esp. on the upper surfaces in order to mimic sun bleaching, and some soot stains were added around the guns and the exhaust outlets. The cooling flaps were emphasized through a treatment with Tamiya “Smoke”, which is perfect for oil stains. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and finishing touches like the wire antenna and position lights applied.
Another subtle whif, the desert paint scheme is probably distracting enough that, at a casual glance, the radials and the modified nose are not obvious at all. Actually, the Japanese engines look pretty British after some cosmetics, and they are small enough to keep overall proportions in reasonable limits – the sleek Whirlwind quickly turns head-heavy and unbalanced with bigger engines grafted to the airframe! Actually, the converted aircraft looks now, when looked at it head-on, almost like a baby Beaufighter!
If you are in bed, make an appointment for the hospital burns unit to see you soon.
It might be a tradition - but it is not a good one.
1951
On Saturday the L train was suspended for a bit because of a rail problem north of Bedford avenue. Subway issues can bring "The City That Never Sleeps" to a screeching halt.
The Dodge Viper SRT (formerly the SRT Viper between 2012 and 2014) is a sports car, manufactured by the Dodge (SRT for 2013 and 2014) division of Fiat Chrysler. Production of the two-seat sports car began at New Mack Assembly in 1991 and moved to its current home at Conner Avenue Assembly in October 1995.
Although Chrysler considered ending production because of financial problems, chief executive Sergio Marchionne announced and showed on September 14, 2010 a new model of the Viper for 2012. In 2014 the Viper was named number 10 on the "Most American Cars" list, meaning 75% or more of its parts are manufactured in the U.S. The Viper was initially conceived in late 1988 at Chrysler's Advanced Design Studios. The following February, Chrysler president Bob Lutz suggested to Tom Gale at Chrysler Design that the company should consider producing a modern Cobra, and a clay model was presented to Lutz a few months later. Produced in sheet metal by Metalcrafters, the car appeared as a concept at the North American International Auto Show in 1989. Public reaction was so enthusiastic that chief engineer Roy Sjoberg was directed to develop it as a standard production vehicle.
Sjoberg selected 85 engineers to be "Team Viper," with development beginning in March 1989. The team asked the then-Chrysler subsidiary Lamborghini to cast a prototype aluminum block for the sports car to use in May. The production body was completed in the fall, with a chassis prototype running in December. Though a V8 engine was first used in the test mule, the V10, which the production car was meant to use, was ready in February 1990. Official approval from Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca came in May 1990. One year later, Carroll Shelby piloted a pre-production car as the pace vehicle in the Indianapolis 500 race. In November 1991, the car was released to reviewers with first retail shipments beginning in January 1992.
The first prototype was tested in January 1989. It debuted in 1991 with two pre-production models as the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 when Dodge was forced to substitute it in place of the Japanese-built Dodge Stealth because of complaints from the United Auto Workers, and went on sale in January 1992 as the RT/10 Roadster.
The centerpiece of the car was its engine. The Lamborghini Company, then owned by Chrysler Corporation, designed the V10 for the Viper by recasting the block and heads in an aluminum alloy, and was based off Chrysler's V8 engine. A major contributor to the Viper since the beginning was Dick Winkles, the chief power engineer, who had spent a lot of time in Italy.
The engine weighs 711 lb (323 kg) and produces 400 bhp (300 kW) at 4600 rpm and 465 lb·ft (630 N·m) at 3600 rpm, and thanks to the long-gearing allowed by the engine, provides fuel economy at a United States Environmental Protection Agency-rated 12 mpg-US (20 L/100 km; 14 mpg-imp) city and 20 mpg-US (12 L/100 km; 24 mpg-imp) highway. The body is a tubular steel frame with resin transfer molding (RTM) fiberglass panels. It has a curb weight of 3,284 lb (1,490 kg) and lacks all modern driver aids such as traction control and anti-lock brakes. It completes a quarter mile (402 m) in 12.6 seconds and has a maximum speed of over 150 mph (240 km/h). Its large tires allow the car to average close to one lateral g in corners, placing it among the elite cars of its day. However, the car proves tricky to drive at high speeds, particularly for the unskilled.
The car is spartan, although it features inflatable lumbar support and adjustable seats. Along with the absence of exterior door handles, the vehicle lacks side windows and a roof. Although a soft top cover was available, it was designed primarily for indoor vehicle storage. Side curtains of fabric and clear plastic operated by zippers can be inserted into the door and hand-bolted when needed. All of these decisions were made to reduce weight. The battery is located in the sealed compartment over the rear wheels to increase rear-end weight and traction. The car shipped with a tonneau cover and video tape on soft-top assembly (the soft top is removable and folds to fit in the trunk). In 1994 the car came, for the first time since release with several options available to the buyer. These included air conditioning, adjustable suspension, larger diameter wheels to accommodate larger brakes, and a fiberglass hardtop for the roof.
Performance:
0-60 mph (97 km/h): 4.5 sec [7]
0-100 mph (160 km/h): 9.2 sec
quarter mile: 12.9 sec @ 113.8 mph (183.1 km/h)[7]
top speed: 180 mph (290 km/h) reference: www.vipercentral.com/specifications/
700 ft (210 m) slalom: over 66 mph (106 km/h)
skidpad average g: 0.96
[Text from Wikipedia]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Viper
The kermit green colour here was added to the limited palette of Viper colours in 1994.
This miniland-scale Lego 1994 Dodge Viper RT/10 has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 91st Build Challenge, - "Anger Management", - all about cars with some link to being angry.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
A common problem for students studying health and social care related subjects in HE is that they can access the web on any number of devices which do not necessarily have automatic syncing of bookmarked web pages enabled. There is also a related problem of sharing, as well as discovering relevant online resources. A potential solution to these problems is a social bookmarking application such as Yahoo!'s “delicious”. Results from previous studies using this service suggest that social bookmarking shares similar features to more traditional indexing systems but also contains extra dimensions such as tags related to time. We present the initial results from a study into social bookmarking that has encouraged three groups, containing over thirty health and social care students, to utilise delicious in their everyday practice and to create a tagged repository of resources that are relevant to their courses. We will discuss the preparation of introductory materials as well as specific problems faced by health and social care students in using Web 2.0 applications. We will also present the results of analyses into the patterns of tagging and bookmarking activity that have emerged in addition to the types of tags that are being used.
Luego del anuncio de PoisonGirl aka www.flickr.com/photos/rowan__ashlar/19673266728/ me he puesto a revisar a mis MIO.
A ambos los he sellado con MSC matt (la misma lata), pero Kairn es hasta ahora el único que muesta grietas (siendo el más nuevo). Cuando lo hice era verano. Se pueden ver claramente gracias a mi Reflex y una posición adecuada a la luz.
Mr. Hobby sabrá de mi...
Revisen sus custom hechos con MSC
Reclamos aka www.gsi.co.jp/contact/mr-hobby/en/
---
After the announcement made by PoisonGirl aka www.flickr.com/photos/rowan__ashlar/19673266728/ I started to check my MIO.
I sealed both with MSC matt (same can), but Kairn is the only one showing signs of cracks (he's the newest). When I painted him was summer time here. You can see them very clearly thanks to my Reflex and light position.
Mr. Hobby will read me...
Check your custom sealed with MSC!
Contact here www.gsi.co.jp/contact/mr-hobby/en/
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
I just deleted this album then re-loaded it to un tag a dealer i have problems with and to blow off steam about his companies' problem. it won't take the wind out of my sales for the love of life on the road. I just spent the last two hours deleting tags to dealers I’ve made large purchases from. The next step is to take their name off of my Truck and Fifth Wheel! That will teach them! I’ve even deleted two entire albums of photos with tags leading friends to the dealerships. My small protest but to have to spend more money in civil court. There should be a court for dealing with consumer products after large purchases and problems exist. Who can afford to do that and or spend the time teaching the bad dealer a lesson! It’s hard when you live on fantasy island and want to believe there are people out there that are true pros and true craftsmen. I know there are a few people out there because I met them and refused to do business with other dealers because I met them too. I’ve seen a guy weld a Holiday Rambler that broke in half over night at the frame and get me back on the road. There is even an RV dealer five minutes from my house that did such a poor job on a 30 foot trailer I want to restore that they lost a ten-grand restoration job! I went elsewhere for a purchase. Where is Brett Michaels when you need him! Now to find the proper venues to vent. Do you think the dealer’s sites post bad reviews? I’m the perfect sucker for a Salesman that cares nothing but for the commission or if they aren’t paid on commission for the BS they lay on you to kill time to eventually close the sale. I shopped for years at many different places within the State and even some Florida dealers for the right RV for me. I have twenty years’ road experience with travel trailers in and out of campgrounds and dealers. The hard part is when you find a good mechanic you are often down the road on the next adventure. The dealer can’t take away my enthusiasm for the joy of my new trailer. They are so useful when built properly and so versatile for travel or events or full time Road Warriors! Who wouldn’t be frustrated when there are 18 jobs that need attention! I was told by the salesman I’d get a good education from top to bottom and the demo guy was going to send me out of the dealership with the fifth wheel receiver or jaws ungreased with no Teflon pad for the fifth wheel! I really needed a fifth wheel hooking and unhooking lesson along with good Hydraulic jack lesson. I was good for most other things except how the solar panel works. But they try hard to push you off on the useless manuals or Destruction books because they are over worked and under staffed in the service area. I get that. Except learning the hard way almost cost me my hand with a bed and the fifth wheel. Luckily I’m quick. Sometimes I don’t know if I should have been a great mechanic a teacher or a great lawyer. I walked HIM through greasing the B&W hitch and greasing the receiver and made him put the Teflon pad he was going to make me leave without that I bought two years ago in anticipation of having a fifth wheel from Mark (the good guy) at the RV show in Greensboro. No kidding, I put a lot of thought into this. Needless to say, he has mechanical skills beyond my capability and they used the excuse it was market time or the RV show to be short with me. Now that I have tested things on the trailer before a trip and found at least 18 jobs that need to be done after waiting for a call for parts that had already been delivered and a call never received then accused of not paying for screens that didn’t fit and that a $125.00 per hour fee was going to be charged, who wouldn’t be upset? Did I mention this? It will always be something! They can just put the nail in the coffin for the common belief that it is over after the Sale is done. Getting passed off from one department to the other is unforgiveable! The excuse is familiar. I just do Sales; you have to talk to Service. Service says we just do Service, you have to go to parts. Even with lifetime warranty printed and tagged all over the trailer with a promise to teach you about how everything works I’ve found out the hard way from a popular dealer in Rural Hall, NC that it is not the case! It’s too bad I didn’t buy my Truck or RV and drive all the way to Atlanta to deal with @Scott Trail or find a similar friend that would make sure everything is right. Dream on Consumer! So, if any name bashing starts remember we always have one friend in the car, RV, insurance or Sales business. When we overall call all Salesman assholes or all insurance companies thieves or all dealings with service mechanics complete disasters we have to remember we have people on our friend’s lists that have those jobs. You know what, right now after a huge purchase and being shuffled it’s amazing I can work up any mercy for any of them. I’ve tried to be a Salesman. Service over profit was my downfall. I’ve tried to be a Customer Service Rep. It was difficult talking to people that needed parts after a large purchase when you just learned there aren’t any parts! We are all selling something whether we know it or not. If you aren’t taking pride in your job to be the best you can be and just killing time you are a part of this problem! Not everyone has a dream job. But it is just my turn to take a punch, but I’m swinging back! It is just unfortunate for them I know a little about RVs. I must have too high a standard to believe that there are really people that give a damn about products or follow through after the sale. I hate that we just don’t care attitude that leaves you searching for a better place. I had a place in Mooresville that I will find again for service. Hopefully the same family runs the place. It is near the Lake in Terrell. I need to return to and find another mobile mechanic once that moved on to a dealer in the mountains and I can’t dig his name up. There are good people out there. They are so hard to find. Maybe it is just me. I expect too much after laying down a hard-earned wage or a life savings for a house, new car, recreation vehicle or piece of equipment that is supposed to work. When I get a new toy, I want to take a photo of every nut bolt and screw on it, one because I am proud, the other reason is for future reference when things fall apart. Buyer’s remorse sucks even if you know the term all too well, Buyer Beware! I saw one guy at the current dealership I am dealing with now running, literally running to get from customer to customer after my purchase. In between him and the good mechanics are problems! The good guy’s name is Mark. He is extremely smart and knows RV’s and fifth wheels up and down. He was literally running with a ladder and carrying three heavy hitches with him to try to wait on at least two customers at the same time. I’m always leaving a window or looking for the good and hoping I’m not back on fantasy island. There were excellent qualified educated trailer technicians in the service in a good building with the right tools to build trailers from scratch, including paint. Getting to them is a full-time job on the customer’s end. They even had parts delivered that they owed me on what they call a we owe and hadn’t bothered to call in a three-week period. They wanted to double charge for some bug screens around 50 bucks until I produced a paid receipt. Even after the Salesmen told (I know his name) the parts manager he personally sat with the mechanic for a half hour trying patiently to put on the wrong screen. Even with lifetime warranty written all over my trailer they wanted to charge me for service $125.00 per hour for labor. That must be some sort of trick. For $125.00 an hour most any parts should be free! I waited three hours even with a scheduled appointment to even get told they were ready to take her in. Two days later I had to force the call to get an eta on when she would be ready. Imagine if I were a full timer living full time in my RV or still doing three shows a day in three different cities a day. Fortunately, I am gifted with a little time. The service manager mentioned to do the 18 jobs I needed to be done he still had to order parts. Imagine I was sold a unit that I (The Customer) found at least 18 things to do after leaving the lot and running the unit. So, I am going to rescue my unit tomorrow and hope what they did fix after two days waiting can get me through my first trip until parts come for the rest of the job. Do you think I am a fool to take it back? It is a hard call! I’ll know tomorrow if I receive a bill or the trailer is in good shape. The tough part is, after you have been tough with service now your unit is at their mercy. I was told by a good agent I don’t take any crap from anyone. But sometimes it costs me. But those of you that are passive and just let them walk all over you take a bigger beating. With full time jobs or people that depend on their unit as a full-time vehicle you can imagine the pressure to change up vacation times or deal with time off from your job to take care of problems.
Digital and film solutions to the same problem, albeit with vastly different approaches. The Fuji feels solid, yet delicate and is as light as a feather. The F1 is built like a truck bumper and could reasonably serve as an anchor and/or as a weapon.
Both are excellent tools. I love the F1 for its simplicity and for its requirement to know what the hell you're doing with it to get anything at all that's usable. The Fuji is elegant and seemingly simple until you delve a bit beneath its surface and discover how to make its images shine (in progress).
I took a trip to Big Sur with these two this past weekend. While the film is not yet developed, there are some keepers from the Fuji here:
sometime the solution can be right in front of your nose, or, in this instance, on top of one's head :)
The Unforgiveable Sin
The problem of the unforgivable sin must also be addressed as we consider perseverance. If the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven (Mat.12:31), then is this not the one transgression that can make Christians lose salvation? How do we know whether or not we have committed this sin? A look at Matthew 12:22–32 will help us answer these questions. We begin with some quick observations about the sin in question based on verse 31. First, it is not just any sin against the Holy Spirit that is unforgivable, only blasphemy against the Spirit. Recall also that blasphemy is a sin involving words. It consists primarily in speech, though it can be committed in the heart as well. What then does this blasphemy look like and why will God not forgive it? Jesus has just healed a demon-possessed man in today’s passage, which leads the crowd to believe Jesus just might be the Christ (vv. 22–23). Some Pharisees then say the power of Beelzebul or Satan enables Jesus to perform exorcisms. Jesus responds, telling the people it is by the finger of God — the Holy Spirit — that He casts out demons (vv. 25–30). He then uses the occasion to teach that blaspheming the Spirit will not be forgiven (vv. 31–32). Thus, attributing demonic activity to Jesus evidences blasphemy against the Spirit. But how can this be so? Remember that knowing the truth is, by itself, not sufficient for salvation. All truth is from God and the Holy Spirit can show a person who Jesus is even if he never trusts in Christ. If He reveals to us that Christ is from God and then we accuse Jesue of being demonic, we have blasphemed the Spirit because we have called Him a liar, denying His character. The Pharisees had come dangerously close to this sin. Of all people, they should have heard the Spirit speak through the Law and the prophets about Jesus as they were trained in the Scriptures, and they should have known that the Messiah would come to defeat the Devil. They were on the cusp of denying Christ out of a conscious, willful suppression of the Spirit’s work, not mere ignorance. The Pharisees were close to blaspheming the Spirit by calling His testimony about Christ a lie even when they knew it to be true (Luk.22:66–71).
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Renewing Your mind - R.C. Sproul
We decided to go for a city break rather than sun in Tenerife again this September. Other than a few days in the North East we haven’t been away since last March and wanted a change and hopefully some sun. The problem is getting flights from the north of England to the places we want to go to. We chose Valencia as we could fly from East Midlands – which was still a pain to get to as it involved the most notorious stretch of the M1 at five in the morning. In the end we had a fairly good journey, the new Ryanair business class pre-booked scheme worked quite well and bang on time as usual. It was dull when we landed with storms forecast all week, the sky was bright grey – the kiss of death to the photography I had in mind. I was full of cold and wishing I was at work. It did rain but it was overnight on our first night and didn't affect us. There has been a drought for eleven months apparently and it rained on our first day there! The forecast storms didn't materialise in Valencia but they got it elsewhere.
You May notice discrepancies in the spelling of some Spanish words or names, this is because Valencian is used on signs, in some guide books and maps. There are two languages in common use with distinct differences. There may also be genuine mistakes - it has been known!
Over the course of a Monday to Sunday week we covered 75 miles on foot and saw most of the best of Valencia – The City of Bell Towers. The Old City covers a pretty large area in a very confusing layout. There was a lot of referring to maps – even compass readings! – a first in a city for us. The problem with photography in Valencia is that most of the famous and attractive building are closely built around, some have poor quality housing built on to them. Most photographs have to be taken from an extreme angle looking up. There are no high points as it is pan flat, there are a small number of buildings where you can pay to go up on to the roof for a better view and we went up them – more than once!
The modern buildings of The City of Arts and Sciences – ( Ciutat de Las Arts I de les Ciencies ) are what the city has more recently become famous for, with tourists arriving by the coachload all day until late at night. They must be photographed millions of times a month. We went during the day and stayed till dark one evening, I gave it my best shot but a first time visit is always a compromise between ambition and realism, time dictates that we have to move on to the next destination. I travelled with a full size tripod – another first – I forgot to take it with me to TCoAaS! so It was time to wind up the ISO, again! Needless to say I never used the tripod.
On a day when rain was forecast but it stayed fine, albeit a bit dull, we went to the Bioparc north west of the city, a zoo by another name. There are many claims made for this place, were you can appear to walk alongside some very large animals, including, elephants, lions, giraffe, rhino, gorillas and many types of monkey to name a few. It is laid out in different geographical regions and there is very little between you and the animals, in some cases there is nothing, you enter the enclosure through a double door arrangement and the monkeys are around you. It gets rave reviews and we stayed for most of the day. The animals it has to be said gave the appearance of extreme boredom and frustration and I felt quite sorry for them.
The course of The River Turia was altered after a major flood in the 50’s. The new river runs west of the city flanked by a motorway. The old river, which is massive, deep and very wide between ancient walls, I can’t imagine how it flooded, has been turned into a park that is five miles long. There is an athletics track, football pitches, cycle paths, restaurants, numerous kids parks, ponds, fountains, loads of bridges, historic and modern. At the western end closest to the sea sits The City of Arts and Sciences – in the river bed. Where it meets the sea there is Valencia’s urban Formula One racetrack finishing in the massive marina built for The Americas Cup. The race track is in use as roadways complete with fully removable street furniture, kerbs, bollards, lights, islands and crossings, everything is just sat on the surface ready to be moved.
We found the beach almost by accident, we were desperate for food after putting in a lot of miles and the afternoon was ticking by. What a beach, 100’s of metres wide and stretching as far as the eye could see with a massive promenade. The hard thing was choosing, out of the dozens of restaurants, all next door to each other, all serving traditional Paella – rabbit and chicken – as well as seafood, we don’t eat seafood and it constituted 90% of the menu in most places. Every restaurant does a fixed price dish of the day, with a few choices, three courses and a drink. Some times this was our only meal besides making the most of the continental breakfast at the hotel. We had a fair few bar stops with the local wine being cheap and pleasant it would have been a shame not to, there would have been a one woman riot – or strike!
On our final day, a Sunday, we were out of bed and down for breakfast at 7.45 as usual, the place was deserted barring a waiter. We walked out of the door at 8.30 – in to the middle of a mass road race with many thousands of runners, one of a series that take place in Valencia – apparently! We struggled to find out the distance, possibly 10km. The finish was just around the corner so off we went with the camera gear, taking photos of random runners and groups. There was a TV crew filming it and some local celebrity (I think) commentating. Next we came across some sort of wandering religious and musical event. Some sort of ritual was played out over the course of Sunday morning in various locations, it involved catholic priests and religious buildings and another film crew. The Catholic tourists and locals were filling the (many) churches for Sunday mass. Amongst all of this we had seen men walking around in Arab style dress – the ones in black looked like the ones from ISIS currently beheading people – all carrying guns. A bit disconcerting. We assumed that there had been some sort of battle enactment. We were wrong, it hadn’t happened yet. A while later, about 11.30 we could hear banging, fireworks? No it was our friends with the guns. We were caught up in total mayhem, around 60 men randomly firing muskets with some sort of blank rounds, the noise, smoke and flames from the muzzles were incredible. We were about to climb the Torres de Serranos which is where, unbeknown to us, the grand, and deafening, finale was going to be. We could feel the blast in our faces on top of the tower. Yet again there was a film camera in attendance. I couldn’t get close ups but I got a good overview and shot my first video with the 5D, my first in 5 years of owning a DLSR with the capability. I usually use my phone ( I used my phone as well). Later in the day there was a bullfight taking place, the ring was almost next to our hotel, in the end we had other things to do and gave it a miss, it was certainly a busy Sunday in the city centre, whether it’s the norm or not I don’t know.
There is a tram system in Valencia but it goes from the port area into the newer part of the city on the north side, it wouldn’t be feasible to serve the historic old city really. A quick internet search told me that there are 55,000 university students in the city, a pretty big number. I think a lot of the campus is on the north side and served by the tram although there is a massive fleet of buses as well. There is a massive, very impressive market building , with 100’s of stalls that would make a photo project on its own, beautiful on the inside and out but very difficult to get decent photos of the exterior other than detail shots owing to the closeness of other buildings and the sheer size of it. Across town, another market has been beautifully renovated and is full of bars and restaurants and a bit of a destination in its own right.
A downside was the all too typical shafting by the taxi drivers who use every trick in the book to side step the official tariffs and rob you. The taxi from the airport had a “broken” meter and on the way home we were driven 22 km instead of the nine that is the actual distance. Some of them seem to view tourists as cash cows to be robbed at all costs. I emailed the Marriot hotel as they ordered the taxi, needless to say no answer from Marriot – they’ve had their money. We didn’t get the rip off treatment in the bars etc. that we experienced in Rome, prices are very fair on most things, certainly considering the city location.
All in all we had a good trip and can highly recommend Valencia.
Citadel Park Passeig de Picasso Barcelone Catalonia Spain
Citadel Park is a park on the northeastern edge of Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia. For decades following its creation in the mid-19th century, this park was the city's only green space. The 70 acres (280,000 m2) grounds include the city zoo (once home to the albino gorilla Snowflake, who died in 2004), the Parliament of Catalonia, a small lake, museums, and a large fountain designed by Josep Fontserè (with possible contributions by the young Antoni Gaudí).
Locations
Citadel
In 1714, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Barcelona was laid siege for 13 months by the army of Philip V of Spain. The city fell, and in order to maintain control over it, and to prevent the Catalans from rebelling as they had in the previous century, Philip V built the citadel of Barcelona, at that time the largest fortress in Europe.
A substantial part of the district it was constructed in (La Ribera) was destroyed to obtain the necessary space, leaving its inhabitants homeless. The fortress was characterized by having five corners, which gave the citadel defensive power, and by a rather wide surrounding margin, serving as location for the army's cannons. It included enough buildings to house 8,000 people.
Hundreds of Catalonians were forced to work on the construction for three years, while the rest of the city provided financial backing for this and for warfare-related expenses as well, with a new tax named el cadestre. Three decades later a quarter was rebuilt around the fortress named Barceloneta, which is located inside the neighborhood Ciutat Vella.
In 1841 the city's authorities decided to destroy the fortress, which was hated by Barcelona's citizens. Yet two years later, in 1843, under the regime of Maria Cristina, the citadel was restored. In 1848, after Maria Cristina's abdication and as the citadel lost its use, General Espartero razed most of the buildings within the fortress as well as its walls by bombarding it from the nearby mountain fortress Montjuic, which helped him gain political popularity. By 1869, as the political climate liberalised enough to permit it, General Prim decided to turn over what was left of the fortress to the city and some buildings were demolished under Catalan orders, for it was viewed as by the citizens as a much-hated symbol of central Spanish government.
The chapel (now the Military Parish Church of Barcelona), the Governor's palace (now Verdaguer Secondary School), and the arsenal (now home to the Catalan Parliament) remain, with the rest of the site being turned into the contemporary park by the architect Josep Fontsére in 1872. Nineteen years later, in 1888, Barcelona held the Exposición Universal de Barcelona extravaganza, inspired by Mayor Rius i Taulet, and the park was redesigned with the addition of sculptures and other complementary works of art. This marked the conclusion of the old provincial and unprogressive Barcelona and the establishment of a modern cosmopolitan city. From that point until 1892, half of the park's layout was enhanced again in order to obtain sufficient space for the zoo. The park's bandstand, Glorieta de la Transsexual Sònia, is dedicated to a transsexual, Sonia Rescalvo Zafra, who was murdered there on 6 October 1991 by right-wing extremists.
Cascada
The lake in the Parc de la Ciutadella
The Cascada (waterfall or cascade in Spanish) is located at the northern corner of the park opposite to the lake. It was first inaugurated in 1881 without sculptures or any meticulous details, and was thereby criticized by the press, after which this triumphal arch was thoroughly amended by the addition of a fountain and some minor attributes, which required six years of construction from 1882 to 1888, and was thenceforth put on display at the Universal Exhibition, and hitherto not been redesigned. It was erected by Josep Fontsére and to a small extent by Antoni Gaudí, who at that time was still an unknown student of architecture. Fontsére aimed to loosely make it bear resemblance to the Trevi Fountain of Rome. Two enormous pincers of gigantic crabs serve as stairs to access a small podium located in the centre of the monument. In front of it a sculpture (designed by Venanci Vallmitjana) of Venus standing on an open clam was placed. The whole cascade is divided in two levels. From the podium on a path leads to the Feminine Sculpture and to the northeastern corner of the park, and upon following the route down the stairs the fountain's pond is rounded and the southern tip of the artifact is reached.
Zoo
The zoo's main entrance
The zoo of Barcelona is located in the park of the ciutadella due to the availability of a few buildings which were left empty after the Universal Exposition of 1888. It was inaugurated in 1892, during the day of the Mercé, the patron saint of the city. The first animals were donated by Lluís Martí i Codolar to the municipality of Barcelona, which gratefully approved of their accommodation in the zoo.
Nowadays, with one of the most substantial collections of animals in Europe, the zoo affirms that their aim is to conserve, investigate, and educate.
From 1966 to 2003 the zoo was home to the famous albino gorilla Snowflake, who attracted many international tourists and locals.
Apart from the usual visits, different types of guided tours or other activities are offered, like for example 20 types of diversionary workshops, excursions and fieldtrips for schoolchildren, or personnel training and educational courses in zoology for adults. More than 50,000 children visit the zoo on an annual basis, which is the reason for the zoo's emphasis on education.
Museum of Natural Science
The facade of the zoology museum of Barcelona
Ceramics on the facade of the zoology museum of Barcelona
The Museum of Natural Science, sited in the park, comprises a museum of zoology and a museum of geology.
The museum of zoology was constructed for the Exposición Universal de Barcelona (1888) by the architect Lluís Doménech i Montaner to serve as an exhibition. Most of the building is constructed of red brick. The most popular displays are the skeleton of a whale and exhibits dedicated for smaller children. The institute's stated aims are to enhance knowledge and conservation of the natural diversity of Catalonia and its surroundings, to promote public education on the natural world, to transmit ethical values of respect for nature, and to stimulate informed debate on the issues and environmental problems that concern society. The museum has permanent exhibitions on the subject of mineralogy, petrology and paleontology; the volcanic region of Olot; minerals' secret colors; the animal kingdom; urban birds; and an apiary.
The museum of geology is a legacy of the scientist Francisco Martorell i Peña (1822–1878), who donated his whole collection of artifacts of cultural and archeological importance, his scientific library, and an amount of 125,000 pesetas to the city for the purpose of creating a new museum. The building, built during the same year and named the Corporación Municipal, was designed by Antoni Rivas i Trias.
The hype is that the iPhone 4 is 'unusable' because of it's supposed antenna problem.
Hogwash.
This is the best smartphone in the world. And now, the safest buy. 100% refund guarantee, AND a free case!
People wouldn't be so worked up over it if this was a Windows phone, or pshh, even an Android.
One of my friends has a Droid Phone that doesn't work without a small piece of tissue in between the battery pack and case. A Windows Mobile Phone carrying friend has to hold down the volume up button on his phone throughout the entire call or it keeps turning itself down.
That new Droid X has the most formidable looking specs of any phone on the market, but is hampered by it's operating system and apparently some screen flickering issues.
You don't hear anyone screaming 'UNUSABLE!' - That's just how other phones are expected, and accepted to work. Have a problem? Rig it to work, or live with it.
Apple prides itself on releasing products that are designed beautifully and function near-perfectly. So they set themselves up for intense scrutiny and over-magnified flaws on every product.
No-one's perfect, sure, but this phone is still amazing, and anyone that actually owns one knows the supposed antenna problems mean next to nothing in REAL use.
The iPhone 4 may be unusable for left-handed, tight gripped people that like to make calls right after a sweaty workout - that also don't care enough about their beautiful phone to buy any sort of case. And that only rely on direct phone communication, rather than all the modes of communication the iPhone was meant for: Like... the INTERNET.
Even so, I haven't dropped any calls on my iPhone 4, with or without my case.
Granted, I live in a good signal area with little congestion, and am right handed, have a case, and am not stupid.
If and when they have an iPhone 5 on Verizon... Apple will rule the smartphone world.
Hey, that HTC EVO 4G ain't so bad either though. Bravo, Sprint!
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If you don't like violence.. I am sorry.
(if you want to use my design please ask for permission first)
Oh, to hell with it. A photo from Wednesday evening, as Rusty the cat receives a healthy dose of attention. I think Daisy looks just fine as is in this snapshot, and I think you should tell her that too. 💗
And if she has a problem with me posting this, she is free to take it upstairs. 😉
Problema real o es un invento de los políticos. La política es el arte de generar problemas, decía aquel. Tirada con un Samsung S3
Took this in our last bout of snowy weather and as you will notice with the edging have been tinkering with my Picasa effects. Not sure about it at first but there;s something about it, what do you think?
Having problems don't know if it's my laptop or flickr but the photos and writing are so small I can hardly read what I've written here. Has been going on for a while now and it's really ticking me off anyone else with these problems or if you know how to fix it please do tell.