National Post

Vancouver Island graffiti vandals ‘tag’ a man found motionless at side of road
In a part of B.C. already renowned for its hard line on graffiti, Mounties are on high-alert after graffiti vandals struck a human target: A 48-year-old man passed out under a highway overpass.

The victim, who has not been named, had his face and stomach sprayed with purple paint. In addition, the assailant used a black marker to scrawl text on the man’s scalp.

“I would expect any normal citizen who found someone in that condition would give us a call instead of spray-painting him,” said Sgt. Max Fossum with the West Shore RCMP, a detachment covering five municalities on the outskirts of Victoria. (RCMP)

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On The Town: the stars of West Side Story explore Graffiti Alley
Who  Michelle Aravena and Drew Foster, stars of the Broadway revival of West Side Story
Where  Rush Lane, known as Graffiti Alley (runs south of Queen Street West, from Spadina Avenue to Portland Street)
When  May 15, 11:30 a.m.

The actors have been on the road with the show for two years, visiting more than 50 cities, and have stopped in Toronto for a month before heading to Japan. This morning, Kucherawy of TourGuys.ca is leading them down Graffiti Alley in the fashion district.

The alley and the show share a similar look: it’s a marriage of vivid colours and dark, urban grit. Tucked behind store fronts on Queen Street, west of Spadina, the architecture is alive with colour. Garage doors and concrete walls are covered in names written in bubble letters. Random signatures, hearts and RIP messages are scrawled on existing graffiti. A black and red butterfly settles on the art. It looks at home. (Photo: Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

Rick Mercer’s rants damaging anti-graffiti cause: Mississauga councillor
Mississauga is grappling with a rise in graffiti on city property, and one councillor blames an unlikely culprit: CBC comedian Rick Mercer.

Councillor Katie Mahoney says Mr. Mercer’s famous rants along Toronto’s graffiti alley, an area specially designated for that use, has damaged the anti-graffiti cause.

“Rick Mercer needs to know that he’s not doing anybody any good with his rants down the graffiti-tagged alley,” Ms. Mahoney fumed during a city council meeting Wednesday, suggesting the Mercer rants may have unintentionally encouraged the spread of graffiti throughout Canada. (Photo: The Rick Mercer Report/CBC)

Our muse the mayor: Artwork inspired by Rob Ford is easy to spot, but why?
He scales the CN Tower, a suited King Kong menacing Hogtown with a streetcar teetering in his clutches. In this Web cartoon, his belly tugs at his shirt buttons. They strain not to pop off.

A local newspaper political cartoonist has him as an elephant one day, and later as a sumo wrestler. To a local graffiti artist, he is both the egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty and the balloon-bellied Tweedledee (or perhaps Tweedledum?). To another he is a frog-mouthed, roly-poly quasi-monster who devours pink bicycles.

Across genres and media, Rob Ford may be caricatured more frequently and viciously than any local public figure in memory. He’s a credible candidate for the second-most ridiculed politician in Canada, after the Prime Minister.

What makes the Mayor such a tantalizing muse to the city’s visual artists?

Laneway tours will change the way you see Toronto
“There are more than 250 kilometres of laneways in Toronto,” announces Graeme Parry, our amicable guide for the next hour. He should know. As a mapmaker, he’s charted many of them himself. The fit New Brunswick native sidesteps a puddle to stand in front of a massive graffiti painting. The crowd looks up at the striking portrait of a forlorn-looking man with a crooked neck clutching a guitar.

“This is known colloquially as Graffiti Alley,” says Parry, who is a virtual fountain of knowledge on the hidden roadways that snake around much of old Toronto. It’s not surprising he’s so knowledgeable — he’s been giving these tours for free every other summer Sunday for the past nine years.

“I used to bike around laneways, and started noticing the graffiti and wondering if there was more,” Parry says as we stroll past wall after wall of blindingly bright spray-painted artwork. “I started exploring, and was impressed by the variety I was seeing — homes, art, gardens. What really struck me was how peaceful and intimate these hidden spaces are.” (Photo: Brent Lewin for National Post)

Friends? Jack Layton had a few
Life for hundreds came to a standstill Tuesday afternoon in sunny Nathan Phillips Square as passers-by stopped at the perimeter of a growing sea of chalk graffiti messages written in honour of Jack Layton, the former NDP leader who died Monday.

A bucket bore a sign “Chalk 4 Jack,” and people added their own messages: “Jack Layton was the reason I started voting,” and “Live by Jack’s example. Don’t agonize — organize.”

The graffiti has spread up the ramp to City Hall’s green roof (Layton would have approved) and now fills perhaps 100 of the square’s two by two-metre concrete paving tiles. Only the journalists walk on the chalk; at 1:30 p.m. about 100 people stood, some eating hot dogs or drinking Pepsi, some on bikes, many with cameras, one with a parasol against the hot sun, reading the hundreds of sendoff notes. Others took up the orange, blue, yellow and green chalk and added their own wishes. (About 50 people were lined up inside City Hall to sign a condolence book, but the graffiti seemed to fit more with the public and effervescent nature of the late leader).

(Photo: Tyler Anderson/National Post)

‘Uninvited’ graffiti artists in a town without pity
Ottawa tried building legal graffiti walls. Montreal considered a citywide ban on spray cans. Toronto kicked off its “war on graffiti” by enforcing mandatory graffiti removal on building owners.

When Langford, B.C., population 20,000, developed a graffiti problem, officials simply vowed to crush the graffiti writers. And then they did.

“They’re vandals, what they do is uninvited,” says Lorne Fletcher, Langford’s manager of community enforcement.

In February, the Vancouver Island city won a landmark civil suit against a graffiti tagger who was alleged to have caused $30,000 in damage. The tagger, who was a minor at the time of the offence, was ordered to pay $3,000 to the city and local businesses. His parents were ordered to pay $2,000. (Photo: Brett Gundlock/National Post)

Rob Ford gets hands on with graffiti removal
It’s pretty obvious that Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t much like graffiti. The mayor even got hands-on and helped remove some graffiti from an alley on St. Clair West as part of the city’s Clean Toronto Together initiative. (Photo: Colin O’Connor for National Post)

Spray up: Inside Toronto’s graffiti scene
It’s a fact that rings more true in Mayor Rob Ford’s Toronto, as a squad of city inspectors hunt down tags and other graffiti and order property owners to have them removed. Some 2,100 clean-up notices have gone out across the city since Mayor Ford took office. They are causing angst among business owners, some of whom agree with the crackdown, but not that they should pay. Graffiti is illegal in Toronto, unless it is deemed to be a mural by the city — a classification that is open to interpretation.

Spray up: Inside Toronto’s graffiti scene

It’s a fact that rings more true in Mayor Rob Ford’s Toronto, as a squad of city inspectors hunt down tags and other graffiti and order property owners to have them removed. Some 2,100 clean-up notices have gone out across the city since Mayor Ford took office. They are causing angst among business owners, some of whom agree with the crackdown, but not that they should pay. Graffiti is illegal in Toronto, unless it is deemed to be a mural by the city — a classification that is open to interpretation.

So, graffiti enthusiasts are holding their breath. To be sure, youngsters with spray cans and a destructive streak scribble on walls for kicks, sometimes disrespecting elders or the unwritten code that says you don’t write on someone else’s work. But there are stretches of downtown alleys and forgotten buildings that have new life thanks to graffiti. Who decides if it’s art, if it’s ugly, if it should be washed away?

“To me, it’s a condition of city life. You live in a big city, you accept that there are traffic jams, the air quality isn’t the best and there’s a bit of trash on the street. Why don’t you accept that there’s a little graffiti?” says the 23-year-old writer, who goes by the name of HONE32. (Photo: Aaron Lynett/National Post)

Muammar Graffiti
Caricatures of Libyan leaders Muammar Gaddafi dot the walls of rebel strongholds in Benghazi. Like many dictators, Gaddafi was careful to control how his images was used in the country, and often ensured he was portrayed as a deity or beloved leader. With the uprising in Libya, though, anti-Gaddafi graffiti and caricatures have sprung up across cities such as Benghazi.

Gaddafi forces seize key town, G8 stalls on no-fly zone
Muammar Gaddafi’s forces seized a strategic town in eastern Libya on Tuesday, opening the way to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi while world powers failed to agree to push for a no-fly zone

Artwork painted on a  Los Angeles billboard on February 16, 2011. Street artist Banksy’s first film “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is up for an Oscar — and it seems the subversive Briton may be waging an unorthodox award campaign on the walls and billboards of Los Angeles. (Photo: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Banksy goes to Hollywood
Last week, it was reported that anonymous street artist Banksy won’t be allowed onstage at the Academy Awards in the event that his film Exit Through the Gift Shop picks up the best documentary Oscar, which prompted us to speculate that he may pull a prank or two on Hollywood.

Photos of the day: Our editors select the best photos from around the world.

Pedestrians walk by a new mural by the graffiti artist Kenny Scharf on November 30, 2010 in New York City. The mural, which is located on Bowery Street, is part of an ongoing project in which a variety of artists are invited to decorate the wall as part of a series. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)