The Urban Etch-a-Sketch: A Photo Essay of Graffiti in Berkeley Walking through the streets of Berkeley recently, I have noticed

an increasing presence of graffiti. Tags, throw-ups, and graphic designs mark the walls, street signs, recycling bins, benches, and sidewalks of my neighborhood. These etchings grab my attention and force me consider the visual transformation of the city. I wonder about the stories behind the tags. Who are these taggers? Why do they inscribe their names and their images on the constructed urban landscape? The writing seems to stake claim to the city space as an expression of cultural citizenship, yet it could easily be considered an act of vandalism in need of erasure. I lean towards viewing graffiti as an artistic intervention staking claim to the cityscape, a cultural counterpart to the social, political and economic work of Right to the City movements. However, this perspective is far from a universal one. About two weeks ago, I noticed this linear drawing around the corner from my apartment: (insert image P3270001)I was attracted to the image for only for its distinctive simplicity, but also for its message. The amorphous grouping of lines, swirls and dots was urging the public to, "Fix my prisons!" I wondered to whom these prisons belonged. Was this tag the voice of the imprisoned, urging us as members of free society to reform the system and liberate those unjustly incarcerated? Dorf, the author of this tag, caused me (and I imagine others) to reflect on the state's problem-ridden prison system for at least a moment. This specific intervention in the city inspired me to mentally engage with societal issues. Not all of Dorf's tags provoked a similar response (insert image P327006) The color and stylistics match those of the other piece. However, this tag merely gives voice to its author's name rather than address a greater societal problem. Dorf inscribes his name and distinctive style on the wall in order to appropriate it as his space. Yet, this visual ownership is temporary and ephemeral. A few days after my initial sighting of this tag, the building owners had painted over the maroon lines. The white paint strokes brushed over the design, disguising it but not completely erasing it. The trace of Dorf's work persisted as a white on white remain of the original tag. Later in the week, not even this trace was detectable. The entire wall had been painted white again. The owners likely viewed Dorf's tag as vandalism defacing their property's pristine white walls, rather than as a potentially positive and productive intervention onto a blank urban canvas. On recent walks through my neighborhood, Dorf's name was not the only tag to draw my attention. Dorf could be a nickname, a pseudonym, or an acronym, but it does not trigger any immediate connections, at least for me. In contrast, these signatures are rich in political and philosophical connotations: (insert images P327007 and P327009) Perhaps it is only in Berkeley that we could find the name of a Mexican revolutionary and a word of Greek origin that describes a quality evoking pity and sadness tagged on a wooden fence and a brick building. In addition to these tags scattered throughout residential streets and commercial thoroughfares, there are a few concentrated zones of graffiti activity in Berkeley. These "hotspots" lack the renown and perhaps the creative dynamism synonymous with Clarion Alley in San Francisco's Mission District or the Beco de Batman in So Paulo's Vila Madalena. Nonetheless, these centers of graffiti in Berkeley are worthy of recognition. As in

other urban areas, a gallery of graffiti lines the train tracks near the Amtrack station in west Berkeley. Trains and tags are a common connection, as famously captured with the New York subway cars in the 1983 documentary Style Wars. A tranquil park with pine trees, picnic areas, a small stream, and a community art center, however, does not scream out graffiti central. In North Berkeley's Live Oak Park, these seemingly contradictory elements coexist. (insert images P4140001, P4140002, P4140003, P4140004) A road divides this relatively small park with a pedestrian underpass connecting the two sections. This walkway runs parallel to the creek and is lined with colorful pictorial interventions. The graffiti found on the concrete walls, buttresses and supporting structures linking the park differs from the tags spread throughout the city streets. An explosion of colors, images, words, and names characterizes these concrete canvases. The spaces of the underpass do not belong to one proprietor or an individual tagger. Instead, it is a collective urban gallery open to all artists with a desire to express themselves, to share their thoughts, to state their grievances, to record their memories, and to experiment with their visual style. The canvas is a shared one with no guarantee of permanence. Earlier work does not disappear entirely, but is rather written over, reformulated, or transformed into something else. The walls are palimpsests of urban artistic expressions, almost like an Etch-a-Sketch where previous etchings are not shaken away but rather preserved in the layers of paint. I can only hope that intrepid investigators will return to the underpass at Live Oak Park in a century or two and rediscover the homage to Sojourner Truth, the R.I.P.s to Fytr and other taggers, and the creative energy of this generation.