enlightenment through commodal wisdom

September 25, 2007 5:03 PM

If these walls could speak
posted by rottytooth (16 comments total)

Push bar

Great idea.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:48 PM on September 25, 2007

"It Sucks Having A Soul" written on the walls at the Record Swap in Champaign IL.
posted by Sailormom at 6:04 PM on September 25, 2007

For a good time call 1 [phone]
posted by tepidmonkey at 6:13 PM on September 25, 2007

"There is no existence, only Vishnu telling himself a joke" - from one of the Brown University buildings' bathroom stalls.

"Fuck you," was the only response.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:08 PM on September 25, 2007

There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.
posted by cmgonzalez at 7:13 PM on September 25, 2007

No "All Hail The Crimson King"?
posted by Pastabagel at 7:25 PM on September 25, 2007

Once at the local coffee shop, when someone wrote on the blackboard "Have you found Jesus yet?", I had to respond "Hey, you go Yahweh, I'll go mine..."
posted by Samizdata at 7:43 PM on September 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

MeFi style
posted by exogenous at 8:06 PM on September 25, 2007

The best bar bathroom graffiti is when people respond derisively to other scrawls or an insulting "conversation" goes back and forth.
posted by Falconetti at 8:24 PM on September 25, 2007

they would say "that tickles."
posted by Soup at 12:23 AM on September 26, 2007

It's 1999-ish and I'm at Goldsmith's University's Student Union Bar in New Cross at some kind of event to promote Orange mobile phones. (They were giving away, for some reason, spacehoppers to all the students. My flatmate at the time was their marketing manager. Even he doesn't remember why spacehoppers.)

Anyway, anyone who's ever been around students and student's unions in the UK will tell you what the graffiti can be like in these places. It tends towards the inspirational. Pretentious - that would be a better word. The kind of thing that the author thinks back to in future life and genuinely shudders, "Ugh! Could I really have been that trite?".

So I'm taking a piss, and written neatly on the wall is "Go out and do something with your life. All it takes is one person to make a difference. Embrace life and PARTICIPATE!" (I'm paraphrasing, but you take my point.)

Just below this, scratched a centimetre deep into the plasterboard was the following outburst of sincere malice: "Yer all cunts, and when I find you I'm going to cut you up."
posted by Jofus at 5:31 AM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Great idea. I wish I had a photo of the wall in the laundry room of the Hall of Graduate Studies thirty-odd years ago—there were some great graffiti. And I remember a mock-argument between people pretending to be Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, and so on, with "revisionist" and "running dog" thrown around with abandon. Pretentious, sure, but loads of fun.

The "Yer all cunts" one is genius.
posted by languagehat at 5:48 AM on September 26, 2007

The best bar bathroom graffiti is when people respond derisively to other scrawls or an insulting "conversation" goes back and forth.

Internet = Bathroom Wall 2.0?
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 7:17 AM on September 26, 2007

The old Talayna's pizza den on Skinker near Wash U. Toilet stall. Written at the bottom of the partition, sideways, near the door, so you had to sit forward almost off the seat, to read it: "You are now shitting at a 45 degree angle."
posted by notsnot at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2007

At various conventions where artists and writers congregate, we used to paper walls with butcher paper in the rooms where they tended to congregate. We'd leave out dishes of writing implements; pens, pencils, crayons, markers, water colors, etc. We'd get the pros drunk and fed, and over the course of a weekend we would have some of the most amazing stuff on the walls. The vast majority was auctioned off for related charities, so that was pretty cool.
posted by Peecabu at 8:37 AM on September 26, 2007

One I remember from the early 80's in a stall at the Art Annex Building at then-SMSU (now MSU):

"If you voted for Reagan, you can't shit here. Your asshole's in Washington"
posted by dammitjim at 9:36 PM on September 26, 2007