What’s the difference? Read on.Last week we brought you the mystery of Wallingford’s stenciled traffic signs. Despite our sarcasm, we were totally in favor of the whimsy; the world needs more silhouetted pin-ups, in our honest opinion.Unfortunately, potentially distracting imagery isn’t Kosher with the city. So between then and now, a squad of Fun Police came and took the signs down.But all is not lost. Because out of this pleasant distraction we’ve finally gotten a definitive answer to the question, “What’s the difference between art and graffiti?”You see, Jonah at SeattleCrime is pro-graffiti. So he asked Wallingford residents why they weren’t outraged about the stenciled signs, a desecration he saw as fundamentally no different than some spray-painted scribbles on a mailbox.To which Wallingford commenter gleep came through with the hotness:To me, this is where the difference lies: Art, whether it’s good or bad, is about the viewer. Tagging is about the tagger, which makes it narcissistic piddling.Hell yes, gleep. Win the audience’s respect and win the right to keep expressing yourself publicly. That’s a crowd-pleasing distinction we can all get behind.
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