Yesterday evening, as I was curled up on the couch with a book, my bike gave me one of those reproaching looks. It's been a while. Yeah, I know that. You know you want to. Yeah, I know that too. Is there a problem? Naw, it's just... it's cold outside. That's never stopped you before. I know, but... Is it me? No, darling, it's not you. There's no other Italian Steel between my legs - just you.

I've spent a lot of time on the subway. It's not too cold to ride, just a little too cold to be motivated to ride. It's just cold enough to make me use a hackneyed conversation-with-an-inanimate-object device.

Anyway, I've been riding a lot of subway, which lets me either curl up with a book for a half hour in the mornings (love it), or press my face against the glass and look at the graffiti as the train tumbles down the tunnel at 32 miles per hour (love it).

I'm getting more tuned in to street art. Not all of it thrills me - far from it - but I've been seeing it, noticing it more often, and it's been making me think about it. How did somebody get up to that billboard? On to that rooftop? Were they speaking in hushed voices when they trotted down the subway track, looking over their shoulder, carrying a backpack full of cans.

Not that all of it is good. I have a hard time imagining the point of venturing on to the subway tracks (though maybe the barrier is a level of risk that's only in my head) just to toss up a scrawled tag; but then again, some of the stuff that Revs and Cost did also elicits some head-scratching, like the billboard-sized roller tags they left all over the city (so odd to see one of those and have my breath taken away from it while driving in a livery cab, too well dressed for my comfort, with coworkers on a work trip...).

I like graffiti because of its low signal-to-noise ratio. Is it art? Yes no and I don't care. Is it vandalism? Yes no and I don't care. Does it require skill? Yes no and I don't care. Is it rebellious? Yes no and I don't care. Is it anti-capitalism? A baffling reversal of advertising? Self advertising? Yes no and I don't care. Graffiti artists, dissatisfied perhaps with the blandness of their surroundings, transform their surroundings. And yet graf has become an easily expected part of the urban landscape - ubiquitous, omnipresent, unsurprising. A tag, a mural, in unsurprising spots. Much of it being absolutly and utterly formulaic, noteworthy only in its mediocrity.

And then, every now and then, something grabs my attention. Sometimes a mural's freshness. Sometimes the curve of a tag. Sometimes something undescribable that makes something stand out. Sometimes, just the color, or the surprising legibility of a word or the vagueness of a phrase or tag. If graf artists are transforming their surroundings, they are recreating a domineering blandness with occasional moments of incredible beauty. How appropriate.

I'm keeping my eyes open a little bit more these days than I have been in some of the recent past, and I suppose it's paying off. Maybe I'll carry a camera more often, and preserve little bits of things that are making me think or gasp.

Image found at ofb.net/~epstein.