Istanbul Graffiti

There's good graffiti and bad graffiti.  Bad graffiti is what you see in El Escorial, Spain.  The kids with cans, for the most part, lack talent and imagination, and seem to be bent on causing hundreds of dollars in damage to four hundred year old stone walls by scrawling their names in rushed black paint.  It's ugly and detracts from the beauty of the town as a whole.  Good graffiti adds something to an area, it's urban art that adds color and stimulation to an area lacking.  The area around Galata Tower in Istanbul is the perfect canvas for this type of art.  The area was basically left to rot thirty or forty years ago and the buildings that are left are crumbling and falling down.  But new money is coming in and rebuilding, we stayed in an apartment that goes for five grand a month, next to a building with busted out windows and rotting insides.  The graffiti provides color and art and life to a neighborhood coming out of despair.  In five years it will be completely out of place, the neighborhood will be rebuilt and beautiful and won't need an injection of vigilante spray painting, but for now, the artists in Istanbul add something to a neighborhood on the verge.  Sure, there's a lot of bad graffiti around, but for the most part it's an interesting, thought provoking, clever addition to the city. As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

Yeah, we are.

There's a couple of these giant bears around Istanbul.  

This person has put their name up all over the city, lots of times it's just an ugly purple square of letters, but my wife's name Poe, so here we go.

Cats, there are an overabundance of cats in this city.  They even crept into the house we were staying in.

I thought this would look good on a t-shirt.

Wc in Europe is the word or abbreviation or whatever for bathroom.  So McD's = Toilet.  Clever.

The color on this piece was incredible.  Really vibrant.  People had started to tag over it, but I thought it was an impressive addition to the area. 

A little Andy Warhol style addition.

Interactive graffiti.  Here's Tammy hopping on the street.

One more of the giant bears. I loved the colors on this one, very cool.