The City of Tacoma ordered Wm Riley & Co. to paint over the graffiti on the Broadway garages in downtown Tacoma between Sanford & Son Antiques and the Spanish Steps. 

That’s wack.

A great discussion on the subject is going down at Exit 133.

I think a history lesson on graffiti is in order.

The term Graffiti was coined in Rome, where poets and prostitutes would scrawl messages on city walls. Graffiti has been found on the walls of Pompeii, in the catacombs of Rome, on the Mayan temple walls of Tikal, and on early medieval Scandinavian church walls. Ancient graffiti was carved by pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in old Jerusalem. Two thousand years ago, nomadic Bedouin tribes scrawled messages and symbols on rocks in what are now Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Today, graffiti is one of the last noble art forms â€" serving an alchemical purpose as it transforms meaningless stretches of concrete into something relatively beautiful. Graffiti is the antithesis of modern urban architecture, which reverses the alchemical process, turning wild, diverse landscapes into banal, homogenized wasteland â€" gold into crap, instead of crap into gold.

In the East, poets and artists were sometimes jailed â€" a sort of compliment, according to one scholar â€" insofar as it suggested the artists had done something at least as real as theft or revolution. Here, censors seem to be the only ones who think art is worthy of engagement beyond passive gawking, contemplation and commerce. Jesse Helms seems to be the only one who believes art can affect the world. The fact that any intellectual masochist can produce the vilest and most shocking imagery imaginable with little to no response is a testament to how impotent art has become. Marilyn Manson became a cliché the moment he went multi-platinum. Eminem can at least fantasize for a moment that he is a revolutionary as he thumbs his nose at Senate subcommittees.

Beyond that, most art evokes about as much excitement as a dog in a sweater.

Graffiti re-injects a little risk and love into the act of creation â€" risk of personal freedom, reputation, and even physical harm if artists are imprisoned.

We put graffiti artists in jail, paint over their creations, and build automated machines that buff their art from trains.

When punishment failed to stop them, we put their work in museums under ghastly halogen lights so middle-age hipsters and art tourists could mill about staring at it, never comprehending, pretending they're urbane. Now, we give graffiti artists so-called free walls, where they can exchange risk and passion for safety and acceptance by a bunch of people who will never understand what they do or why. Some succumb, claiming all they ever really wanted to do was paint.

Real graffiti artists â€" the ones on the streets â€" assault an increasingly homogeneous landscape that is covered with advertisements and symbols that rob us of our dignity.

Graffiti reminds us that there is something else â€" bright, uncomfortable, asymmetrical cultural signals that initiate a sort of aesthetic shock. Even as a criminal act, graffiti seems to be increasingly culled or absorbed by ambient ignorance, commoditization, petty judgment and the relentless expansion of boring architecture. We are soothed, however, when we remember the Discordian Law of Eristic Escalation â€" “Imposition of order equals escalation of chaos.” And we find hope in the fact that despite all attempts to erase them, graffiti artists have returned to the streets for more than 1000 years.

And they will return to the streets of Tacoma, too. â€" Paul Schrag Michael Swan

Ed. Note: Paul Schrag's name was accidently tagged at the end of this story.  It's actually Michael Swan's opinion. Classic.

Link to In-Tacoma for city's response.