Graffitti vs. Artistic Expression

I enjoyed the movie Bomb It watched in class the other night. It really offerred some insight to the culture of Taggers and Graffitti artists.
In my opinion, tagging is vandalism. Graffitti art that is commissioned or desired on a piece of property is art. While art has always been considered controversial, I don't think vandalizing someone's property is ever ok. This image of graffitti is actually pretty cool. I like how the stairs look like they are actually floating across the platform. However, someone is going to have to clean this off the subway platform which will be using tax payers funds. Those funds could definately be going towards something more useful to the public than cleaning up someone's artistic expression.

There are some really offensive tags written in public places. Also, tagging is usually connected to gang activity and crime. There is a big difference between artstic expression and pure vandalism.

Last week traffic was backed up on Katella because the right lane needed to be closed while the graffitti clean up crew worked on removing some tagging on a wall. What a waste of time for all of us commuters. I'm sure the tagger was enjoying the mess he created, which is part of the rush of tagging.