Andrea: Chaos, Politics, and Urban Decay

feorlen spent the last few days with us, braving Florida’s humidity and a cat with an unfortunately-timed UTI to hang with Shelly and I.

Wednesday we wandered around downtown Tampa and Ybor City, talking about relationships and urban decay and taking pictures of the grafitti. Tampa has recently seen an explosion in political “treet art,” most of it preprinted and slapped up on abandoned buildings all over the place. Some of it is really quite sophisticated, and it’s everywhere.

We didn’t have to look too far to start seeing commentary; someone had made his views on the recent rate increases on downtown parking meters quite clear:

A few blocks from where we parked the car, we found an abandoned building totally plastered in political agitprop:

The image on the left is well-known in billboard hacking circles; it’s the face of Andre the Giant, and the icon was designed by activist Shepard Fairley as part of an anti-authoritarian and anti-consumerist propaganda campaign. (There’s an interview with Fairley here.)

Some of the other imagery, though, is even more interesting. Bandwidth-crushing photos lie beneath!