Street Art Legalization

“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody drew whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet. ” (Banksy 85) Graffiti is a global form of expression that is untamed but uses similar methods as advertisements, yet is illegal in most cities. Street art is a way of spreading your name or message, just like a company puts up billboards to get their product to their demographics. Graffiti and Street art in general are just terms for the urban art form of scribing or painting on public space with a message or name. The culture of graffiti is very hard to control since all of the tools needed are in the average person’s home already. Street-Art should be legalized because it is less destructive than advertisements and they are displayed in the same methods. Tagging is the first step in becoming a graffiti writer, It is an artist’s baby steps in to the urban art form known as graffiti. A tag in graffiti is an artist’s signature. It represents who you are, where you’re from, and why you write. As the graffiti writer “Earsnot” said, “Tagging is like a timeline” you can follow the tags and see where the person has been that day just by the color of their ink (‘Infamy’) “The term ‘graffiti’ derives from the greek graphien which means to write” The current meaning of graffiti came to being because that is what the drawings and “marks found on ancient Roman architecture”(Phillips Par 1). Writers for the majority will not sign their real names; they instead use nicknames, codes, or symbols within complicated lettering systems” (Phillips Par 4). Graffiti usually gets a bad reputation because people see the beautiful murals and wonder why the same artists create