A Many-Splendored Defacement

In New York City, one is constantly encountering graffiti. The vast majority consists of tags that have no meaning to your average random passerby but have some larger meaning within the community of spray-can-wielding delinquents. Some of it takes the form of gigantic, elaborate murals that are baffling both in their artistic convolutedness and their seemingly impossible-to-reach locations. And some of it is just weirdly charming, like the work of James de la Vega, whose surreal little cartoons and sayings are occasionally scattered on the sidewalks of the Upper East Side on weekday mornings.

A recent favorite of mine is the anonymous love-struck spray-can wielder who decorates walls and dumpsters with a simple yet elegant "i love you".

Normally, as far as graffiti goes, there is surprisingly little in the way of obscenity. Which is why it was doubly jarring to walk by one of these "I love you" installations in Park Slope last weekend to find that someone had made their own response to the statement, to the effect of "fuck love, you motherfuckers." (I should go photograph this before someone paints over it.)

Guess someone got burned. I hope it wasn't the person who painted the "i love you" in the first place. That would be tremendously heartbreaking.