There is a growing problem that I have noticed throughout the last six years as a resident of Brooklyn, NY. Living in NYC I am exposed to a vast array of graffiti everyday. I see it all. Everything from penises drawn into women's faces on movie posters to personal jabs at the lack of prominence of someone's genitalia, But one thing has deeply disturbed me lately: Most graffiti I see nowadays is horribly misspelled. It's a very clear sign that the education system is failing our children. Most times I can't even tell what insult the vandal is trying to convey to me.
The other day I saw this written on a train station wall; 'SEK MYR BD5!TZG?' This is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. I started to tear up when I turned and saw a confused kid trying to draw a penis going into a woman's elbow. This kid had clearly never been taught the basic biology of the female body. American juvenile delinquents nowadays lack the basic skills they need to deface public property properly and offend subway patrons. If you look at other countries' graffiti it puts us to shame. Everything is spelled correctly, the punctuation is in the proper places and it's grammatically correct. If you go to Canada you'll see graffiti on signs like; 'DEBBIE, FROM TORONTO, IS A FAT WHORE!' or 'AMERICA'S GRAFFITI EATS ASS!' This is just one more sign that we as a country have fallen way behind. America now ranks 78th in the world when it comes to graffiti literacy.
We need to pitch in and help give our hoodlums the skills they need or pretty soon there will be illegible graffiti blanketing our country. It has gotten so bad that many gifted vandals have fled the US to seek more nurturing graffiti environments.
A 19-year-old kid named Ray Ray, who recently relocated from Queens to France, had this to say, "America just ain't what it used to be when it comes to graffiti. I need to be in a country that will help me to excel at what I love doing. I wasn't getting any encouragement in Astoria. It's like no one there wanted me to pursue my dream of spray painting shit on public walls."
This man had just finished drawing a beautiful, perfectly placed penis going into the vagina of Meryl Streep on the poster for the Academy Award nominated film Doubt. We can't afford to lose anymore great graffiti vandals like Ray Ray. Vandal education needs to be addressed before it's too late and American graffiti becomes as irrelevant as the George Lucas movie.