Off the Runway: Milanese Graffiti

Whenever people traveling to Italy complain that the "Fuck da Police" and other such slogans and their accompanying pictograms scrawled across subway cars, monumental fountains and most obscure and somehow diminish the beauty of the Italian urban landscape, my response is always the same. The ancient Romans tagged the sh*t out of their acqueducts, civic buildings and temple walls. And now, we hang said offensive form of popular self-expression in museums behind glass whence past thousands of tourists shuffle daily ooohing and aaahing at the ancient expletives and political rantings. In fact, said graffiti is one of scholarship's biggest and most important sources for learning about the people outside that 1% of the Horace-Vergil reading literate ultra ultra minority. What I'm trying to say here is that graffiti in Italy (like the gladiatorial games resurrected twice annually at the start of the Gucci sale), is a time-honored tradition dating back to ancient times.

So on our way home from a Cheap Monkey party somewhere deep in the heart of the unpolished, industrial, Shoreditchy-esque quarters of Milan, Charlotte and I found ourselves crossing this superbly tagged bridge en route back to the Metro and me and my crappy little replacement camera couldn't resist indulging in a snapfest. And so, I thought I'd break up the runway monotony and share. Wonder what our descendants will make of our mark on society's walls in the 23rd century...