Jump to content

Made U Look

mn1_fuckos

By mn1_fuckos
in Brick Slayers

Recommended Posts

This forum is supported by the 12ozProphet Shop, so go buy a shirt and help support!
This forum is brought to you by the 12ozProphet Shop.
This forum is brought to you by the 12oz Shop.
  • Replies 8k
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Oliver Clothesoff

Oliver Clothesoff

Posted
Posted

5 year old knows right and wrong, and graffiti is wrong

 

ROCCO PARASCANDOLA

September 15, 2008

Christopher Nielsen has a strong sense of right and wrong. Graffiti, he says, has no place in public. Not on buildings. Not on cars. And certainly not on trains. Offenders, he says, should pay a stiff price. Force them to clean up their handiwork. Then send them to jail if they do it again.

 

"Graffiti is very bad, dude," he says. "I'm angry about it, all the way to 100 degrees."

 

Christopher is 5 years old, a Port Washington kindergartner who wants taggers to realize the error of their ways.

 

He first noticed graffiti more than a year ago, according to his grandfather, Fred Nielsen, 62. And he even draws a distinction between tags on a warehouse, for instance, and those on a sanctioned mural on the side of a corner store.

 

"For him, that's art," Nielsen says, referring to the latter example. "When he was younger, we talked about right and wrong. When Christopher sees graffiti, he senses it is wrong. He feels very strongly about it. And because he's able to articulate it so well, he puts passion behind his word."

 

Recently, Newsday told the tale of ***UTAH*** and ***ETHER***. She's the most notable female tagger in the city, police say, and ***ETHER*** is her boyfriend. They've been accused of tagging subway cars at two Manhattan train yards, with estimated damages of about $100,000. Prosecutors in three other boroughs are likely to file additional charges, according to police sources.

 

Nielsen read the story, then made sure to show read it to Christopher, reading it to him as the boy sat on his lap. The reaction was as expected: Christopher was outraged. What followed, however, was not typical.

 

Christopher told his grandfather in no uncertain terms that Newsday needed to know how he felt.

 

"I don't like graffiti," he wrote in an letter that he dictated to his grandfather, who e-mailed it to Newsday. "I see it everywhere in New York City, in bathrooms, on boxcars, when we are going to a picnic, and I see it on garages, which are for vehicles, and everywhere."

 

And this: "Make sure those two people don't escape. Try to get every graffiti person out of the entire universe. Can you please tell the policemen they did good work?"

 

Port Washington is not immune to problems, but rampant graffiti is certainly not one of them.

 

Still, there is no shielding children from all of life's issues, so when Christopher, a big toy-train buff who keeps several in his room, asked his grandfather for a look at an actual train station, it was all aboard the Long Island Rail Road and on to Penn Station.

 

The boy remembers - and acts out quite nicely in his living room - his amazement as, from the train, he saw several subway cars in Queens defaced with graffiti tags.

 

"Me and my grandfather were in the fifth window," he remembers. "Then I saw the boxcar. I said, 'Grandpa, look at the graffiti.'

 

"They have to clean that up," he tells a reporter, whispering in his ear.

 

Christopher is still trying to get through the day without a nap, and it's obvious he hasn't thought about the deterrent effect certain punishments may have on particular offenders. He does think, however, that taggers such as Bremner and Harper should be made to clean up after themselves.

 

"If he messes something up, he has to clean it up," his grandfather says. "It's something a lot of kids his age can relate to."

 

There are no police officers in Christopher's family, though Christopher would seem to be the perfect candidate. Should recruitment officers get back to him in 16 years? Maybe, though for now he says he'd love to make a career out of cleaning up dirt - he's inspired by the TV show "Dirty Jobs" - and telling others how important it is to do away with graffiti.

 

He's already won over a man of the cloth, the Rev. John Vlahos, a Greek Orthodox priest in Brookville who was discussing an interfaith project with Nielsen when Christopher asked for a moment.

 

"I said to the priest, 'Graffiti is bad, really bad,'" Christopher remembers. "The priest is really happy. He really agreed with me."

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Oliver Clothesoff

Oliver Clothesoff

Posted
Posted

NEWSDAY’S REMARKABLY CHILDISH GRAFFITI STORY

 

The headline reads: “5-year-old knows right and wrong, and graffiti is wrong.” Sadly, this is not for an Onion piece, but an actual story in today’s Newsday—don’t forget this brilliant reportage. What was reporter Rocco Parascandola smoking when he thought it made sense to write way too many words about what some 5-year-old Long Island kid’s opinion on graffiti is? It’s still hard to believe the newspaper wasn’t duped after reading some of these quotes from the Port Washington kindergartner who first started hating graffiti when he was 4: “Graffiti is very bad, dude. “I’m angry about it, all the way to 100 degrees.” He’s really pissed about UTAH and ETHER’s rampage too. His grandfather read him the story about the arrest of the infamous vandal couple and the youngster was so moved that he supposedly wrote a letter that was dictated to his granddad and then emailed to Newsday:

I don’t like graffiti. I see it everywhere in New York City, in bathrooms, on boxcars, when we are going to a picnic, and I see it on garages, which are for vehicles, and everywhere.

Even more shocking, the puny conservative-in-the-making wants to rid the entire cosmos of pesky vandals:

Make sure those two people don’t escape. Try to get every graffiti person out of the entire universe. Can you please tell the policemen they did good work?

According to the publicity seeking grandfather Fred Nielsen, the kid acknowledges the difference between tags and murals, claiming the latter is art while the tags are just vandalism. Too bad someone doesn’t sit that little bastard down and explain how one couldn’t have existed without the other, and if it weren’t for all those meany tags, the cutesy mural shit would never have even happened. That and there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny! |Newsday|

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...