So, a certain Moxy has a manfriend. Said manfriend is pretty cooly-pants. Or so he thinks. (Wink, wink, all in good fun.) And in all this fancy coolness–hipness–if you will, he has been keeping the company of some very hip people. Turns out, this can at times be a very educational experience.

For example, though it may seem–especially to casual passer-by and suburban or just plain un-cool philistines like myself–like an art particularly appreciated for its subversive and renegade qualities, graffiti art is actually is far more structured than one might think. It even has rules. That’s right, it’s not just for greasy angst-filled adolescents anymore, folks. A shadowy society of punks armed with spray cans are actually dictating unspoken laws of the self-respecting tagger.

Now, there a lot of them, I would guess. Tacit understandings to communicate, stakes to claim, skills to showcase. I don’t know a darn thing about any of them. I was only told one, and you, lucky reader, will get to try and decipher it from a little game I learned from Sesame Street. It’s normally about exclusion and racial prejudice, but this one is just about un-classy tagging. And not the sort you do when you pick up a sad chick from her boyfriend’s funeral. Take a look: One of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong.

 

That’s right, kids, like so many other things in life (perspiring glasses, library books, your dirty little hands) graffiti has it’s appropriate place. Public buildings–especially those housing government you DISagree with, sides of trains, old bridges, anything abandoned. Tagging code indicates that true taggers avoid places that should be respected and that don’t send a message–schools, homes, etc. But DO feel free to tag a Bush. Good boy, Fido.

And in the case that you are a posin’ (do the kids still say that?), hipster, Shepard Fairey, art-kid wanna be and you take your silly home-made Andre the Giant tag to the walls of a private residence? Don’t go bragging about it. No matter what your tag may say, you might as well be tagging yourself “Jackass.”