Taipei Hsimending

I had this past Monday off , and since I've been hearing so much about the Taipei graffiti scene, I thought I'd head up there and see what was what. Soumen tipped me off that Xinmending would be a good place to start. Unfortunately, I didn't get to stop off in Hsinchu on the way back to Taichung to have a look around. I had been looking forward to visiting the Burger King in front of the train station.
I found one in Taipei, anyway, so I got my fast food fix.

The graffiti action in Taipei, from the little I've seen, is a lot more hectic than in Taichung. In Taichung, 4Crew has the city pretty much to itself and doesn't have to put up with too much in the way pieces getting painted over, and the murals that go up stay unmolested until the weather gets the best of them.


Taipei's a bigger scene. Lots of places to paint, but everybody wants to put something up where the scene is , I guess. Following are some tags from the various writers working up there.

I've got lots more to work through in the next couple days, but it's too late to edit anything else tonight. Enjoy.

Close to Home

Those Graffiti Guys struck again last night, this time within sight of my apartment. Actually, from the roof of my apartment block. Below on the left hand side of the picture, if you use your imagination, you can see the intersection of Kungyi Rd and DaTun Street. There's usually a KTV on the corner there, across from McDonald's, but it seems that this particular establishment is having a temporary shut down. See Picture 2.

This is Sam of Taichung Four Crew, and Taipei YIA.

Destruction of the Park--Long Live the Park

This is the little park on Hua Mei Xi Jie, next to the pub that used to be Napoli years ago. There was never a lot of graffiti there in the past, but a few pieces have shown up during this de-/recon-/struction phase. I was there a few weeks ago to to see some of the pieces before they disappeared. These two showed up in the last two weeks, according to one of the construction workers there who was having a refresher at the end of the day.

This is credited to Omen, Fast, & Bobo of Taichung 4-Crew. Possibly one of Omen's last contributions before going on holiday?


Below, Bobo's piece, and then a few details that I enjoy playing around with. I've learned that YIA is a Taipei Graffiti crew that Bobo and Sam work with from time to time. I've got to find the time to get up to XinMenDing and see what's up.

Some (More) stuff I came across recently

Sorry, time constraints and computer woes kept me from finishing this group of pictures last week. The ingenious piece above is adjacent to a ... ummm... no idea what it's called so I'll label it a "Disco Park." Sue me if there' s a better word for it. This is where folks from the neighborhood go every morning to have ballroom dancing classes. It is truly an experience. When I went to take pictures of 4Crew Live in Concert (sort of) there was an older man there practicing with a younger student. "Student" " ? " And so forth and so on. I thought it would be a nice shot to include them in front of this piece. I smiled and pointed to my camera. He smiled back and did his best to keep out of my way. (Af) fair enough.

Graffiti Machine - via infectious videos

" This is a great vid of a graffiti machine - used I guess to ease the work load on the vandals! Although I can't see the kids taking to this contraption any time soon. "

I didn't see any vandals in the video, unless it was the white guy with his baseball cap on backwards, but he was just holding a video camera. Maybe the vandal was the guy who pressed Enter on the laptop. I find, sometimes, that I just don't know what people are talking about. I mean, for an act of vandalism, one would have to be very stupid, indeed, to put in all the time to set up this contraption, and to sit around and watch is do it's thing. I can't imagine it would be all that easy making a fast getaway when some "Good Citizen" notifies the fuzz that there's vandals about.

Anway, nice video over there. Groovy tool.

Meanwhile, On the North Side of the Island...

Taipei's graffiti artists try to say it with paint

The Taipei Times had this story, pg 2, in their Sunday edition. There's mention of the graffiti park in Xinmending, and of a teacher who is working with artists thinking that "but graffiti artists that have been properly guided can be allowed to express themselves." A graffiti buxiban?

More importantly, there was this little nugget:

On Wednesday, the Taipei City Government's Bureau of Environmental Protection announced that in an effort to clean up the city, graffiti artists will now face fines of between NT$1,200 (US$37.50) to NT$6,000.

To collect, the city has set up a 24-hour "environmental protection hotline" to report illegal activity with a cash carrot for snitches. As much as I want it to, the article does not say that the pro-environment folks in the Taipei goverment are particulary concerned about litter, or unsightly real estate advertisements that are crudely affixed to light posts around the city, ads which leave spent adhesives up and down poles so that the visual unpleasantness can carry on.

Unless "Article 27 of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), which prohibits the polluting of the ground, pools of water, drainage gutters, walls, beams or pillars, utility poles, trees, roadways, bridges and other structures" can be interpreted to include the fliers, handouts, and call-girl phone numbers that paper my scooter if it's parked outside for too long.

It's a shame the phone number wasn't given. I'd like to report some litterbugs.

As far as I know, Taichung writers are safe from arrest. I could be wrong. Maybe I'll go ask the cops.

Fresh Paint

Before the rain on Monday, I drove around downtown and found this wall across from a KTV near the park. The representative of the KTV who saw me shooting arrived as I was changing lenses to express his displeasure at my taking pictures of a wall in an empty parking lot. I think he had privacy issues. I asked him if it would be ok to come back later when there were lots of cars in the parking lot. We seemed to be having communication problems. I think he was saying "Don't take pictures here," but the "Give me a good reason why" was lost on him.