North Van Skate is actually called "SeyLyn" Recreation Center.  Seymour and Lynn Creeks are two gullies that flow down the mountain and bring the fresh water to the hungry little barnacles in the big mean ocean.

SeyLyn is nothing to write home about.  Mainly because they forgot to put walls in there.  Writing on skate surfaces can only get you so much mileage because the wheels wear down the color.  Some pipe-smoking Engineer somewhere needs to meditate on this, while his dog fetches his slippers.

Or perhaps he needs something different & exciting in his pipe. Or maybe, quit your "day job" as a city planner, and become a Reiki Therapist.  Learn how to paint "Reiki Graffiti".  Send "long-distance healing" to rich business men in Japan.

Seylyn's Krockadile Arm is our next virtual encampment. It's the slap of a male predatory disciplinary parent.  It's the green organic octopus, the Great God of Kitsilano Vegetarians.  Did you know that 95% of Grafitti is the result of over-disciplinary parents ruining and suppressing the innate artistic abilities of their children?

If you really open your Chicken-Eyes and look around in Chok'lit Land, you'll learn New and Amazing things every day.

You'll learn how the Tail that Slaps The Hand is a guilty as the Other.  You'll learn how nasty young children teach old beguiled parents how to live life to the fullest.

This is the kid that's being slapped. Note the blood dripping from his eyes and the Garfield-Against-The-Windshield expression on his face. Dead kat tell no lie. Now, this, my finest PTA-totlers, is the beginnings of a Great Tagger.

Now we get down to real Monkey-Business. Big Billbo' tags. Not much imagination here, and even less good paint. I can't help but believe that this is just plain old Crummy Art, done by people who have NOT ATTENDED a SEZ1-MANDATED GRAFF SCHOOL.  Live and learn.  Lean and Love.  Limp and Elope. Pope on a Rope.

Now, we enter Juvenile Mohawk Land.  My Mommy's SUV could paint a better picture than that if it ran over a Volkswagen.  Jesus, Painterly Sybionic Technology, this.  MSun.  Okay, okay, it's a bad Hair Day, I must admint.  Bad Hair in the Mornin', bad hair at noon, bad hair in Hare Krishna Land.  Bad Air, No Donut.  Bad Cop, no Granola Bar.

I figure If I write enough Bhuddistic Kosmic Shit, maybe it'll make these Limp-Dick pictures look a little Greener;  know what I mean? :[}

This BaseBall Dude is somewhat Redeeming.  I guess the Whaling and Gnashing of Teeth finally got the Graf Goddess to turn her benign Gaze this way. Nice little Cameo, dude.  The colors are right, the cap is right, the Big Smile says it all: The World Is My Oyster.  Say a lot with a few lines, and you get de respec' of old Sezzie fo' sure.

Let's talk "FACES" for a while.  We'll all do much better.  Art is Art.  Life is Life.  But FACES, my dear slum-bugger, are FACES.  Ain't nothin' like it in the Human Depository.  FACES sez it all.  Faces Don' Lie.  Faces don' bugger the Truth.   Faces are real, all we's got, all we's want.  Faces is how we face each other, face the day, face off, face the Musik, face the Lessons, Face the Facts, Face the Freeze-Frame, face the Crooked Rap Stars of Tomorrow.  FACES'R'US.

Take "Dutchey-Boy" on the left, fr'instance.  The eyes say it all: frozen Love, Frozen Anger for Breakfast.  The mouth says more: I'm a Singing Boxtop from a Cereal Package.  The Hat, however is the Prickley Winner: a Communist Train Conductor's keepsake.  It's all in how you shuffle the cards, Roscoe.  Remember that, when you're down at the Cobalt Hotel.

 

Now then, there's still hope in Gay Heaven.  The Jaunting Young Yellow below, besides being Enamoured with Picasso, is a quick take on "Buddy" (Scott Thompson) from the Kids In The Hall. He's letting us know that Tags, Taggers and Taggees are best left open and unbiased to all Orientation, Gender and Persuasion. Although Back Alley Boyz are overwhelmingly Anglo, Straight, and Phobic, times are changing. The Canvas is big enough for all the colors.

You'll note the GOOD "home-designer" shows on TV now, are all gay blades, laughing up their kazoos while they show their Betty Bebop White Yuppie hosts how to run their lives and ruin their roosts.   It's bad "hometown-american-style-karma" coming home to roost.  And those are Fat Pigeons, Mabel, fat birds with no eyes.

Skulls and Death: these archetypal themes have followed humanity (and plagued the art-world) for Millenia.  Light years. Many Sabbaths, many Fortnights.  Youth is perplexed by Life, but will never admit that much.  So youth becomes perplexed by the next best thing: Death.  And Death of course - like our lovely fellow-bikers would openly admit - is a far more compelling subject than LIfe, because, we all know:

DEATH IS BIGGER THAN LIFE.

Kind-a has a nice ring to it, eh?