Stopped By A Train

I don't mind getting stopped at rail road tracks; I like looking at graffiti, but only if it's well done. This morning on my way to work, a train halted all the traffic.  It was going extremely slow, which gave me a chance to really inspect the graffiti. Some of it was inspired. The graffiti was as exotic, colorful and unreadable as any alien alphabet. Unfortunately, the train came to a stop, and the train cars in front of me were very pedestrian efforts.

Instead of T-BOZZ! in subtle gradations of color rendered by stolen paint cans, I had to endure tossed-off squiggles. The artist – or as they say on the street, tagger – looked like they were just trying to mar the surface and no effort of artistic intention was present. I realize some people like that kind of thing, but I find it even more pretentious to intentionally obfuscate one's graffiti craft in a pose of throw-away insouciance.

We work commuters sat in traffic, and some of those with trucks, could no longer contain themselves, and jumped the curb and drove their trucks through a field, presumably to a road somewhere. One businessman in a BMW, got out of his car, and went up to the stopped train to see if he could see the end, or perhaps to see if any better graffiti was on its way. The businessman was on the phone, presumably complaining about the quality of art. I gave him a look that said, "I hear you buddy. These inferior scribbles aren't worthy us." He was so disgusted by the feeble artistic effort that I feared he would bottom out his BMW trying to jump the curb. 

A guy in front of me, in some tricked-out "Rice Burner" warned the angry businessman that his car was too low to try some kind of get-away. I certainly wasn't going to try and jump the curb, as if I were the Duke Boys in the General Lee. A bent axle is the last thing I needed, and I've seen bad art before.

After fifteen minutes, the train eventually moved again. There were some better artistic efforts. 

This might sound elitist, but I really think that would-be "taggers" need to present a resumé to a National Academy of Graffiti. I think embarrassing displays like this morning would be lessened.