There's this park in Berlin called Mauerpark. It is a park not unlike Dolores Park in that on sunny Sundays the whole city turns up with blankets and coolers and hibachis and twelve packs (only
there they're called kastens).
Like Dolores Park, Mauerpark has an inviting hillside to sit on.
At the crest of the hill, there is a wall surrounding some kind of arena or something. This wall is covered in graffiti.
Kids are lined up, spray cans in hand, eager to paint new pieces, try new techniques, dazzle their peers -- in full view of a park full of picnickers.
I'm no expert, but quality seems no better or worse than can be found in the most grimey, hardest-to-find back-alley spots in San Francisco.
I especially like these two, as do these other two tourists, stopped to scrape up some souvenir paint chips. But seriously, nice lines!
This piece was thrown up by what I'm pretty sure was a 12-year-old kid. When I was 12 I watched a lot of TV. When a relative of mine was 12 he tried to paint some graffiti on something in Berkeley and was arrested and sentenced to a million hours of community service.
There was even a lone street-artier piece, this little girl painted right into an intentionally recessed cavity.
That about does it for my time in Europe. Thanks for your patience, and hopefully we all learned something.
NEXT WEEK: Back to San Francisco.
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