The definition of Shoefiti - glossary of Graffiti

Ever see a shoe tree ?

No it’s not this. 

It’s this :

 

or

 

or this

Some people think Shoefiti, known as shoe tossing or Lancer de Chausseurs in French, is  a form of gang communication. See this wikipedia article on Shoe tossing. Holy moly, aren’t we paranoid.

Here is an article I love on shoetrees. Roadside America 

Anyone who loves Street Art, like myself, believes it’s all about the fun, and the exposure. Tossing athlete's foot spores to the wind is not  the exposure I’m talking about.  Street artists want exposure, they force it on you.  In urban environments tagging and Street Art is ubiquitous, so much so, we don’t see it anymore.  It’s nearly as invisible as copy. Like copywriting. 

Though Street Art is about exposure, I think Shoe Tossing is an intimate gest.  You have this pair of shoes you love, which have witnessed great and terrible moments in your life.  You can’t throw them away because they embody your experience like certain songs you play until your family tells you they’ll strangle you.  Those shoes you love so much, that you wore until you felt the tarmac on the ball of your foot.  You have to memorialize them some how.  No one will want them, not with your fungus and that hole the size of a peach stone.  Can’t give them to Goodwill. Can’t toss them in the trash.  It’s like throwing away a slice of your life.  You honor them and toss them over a wire, on a street near home or work, at night when nobody is watching.  At night because, no, those are not your shoes, they just look like a pair you owned.

I threw a pair of shoes off a ferry into the Mediterranean and over the Ponte Vecchio bridge.  No one knew, until now.  I remember one of those pairs.  I remember shopping for them.  One was black roach-killer ankle boots.  Sigh.  The other I can’t remember and now they’re probably in a shark’s belly.

It is believed that Shoe Tossing has folk origins, this article states it has to do with “ancient ceremony or rite in connection with the transfer of property".   

The techniques of Shoefiti often include shoes with laces and a strong arm.  It helps if you aren’t sloshed or if you can free climb.  Lazy souls can throw them off their balconies. Long laces help.  But shoefiti isn't relegated to lace-ups.  Shoetrees someties have themes.

Pump Shoetree from Roadside America

In Paris, Shoefiti is always visible around rue Mouffetard and in Butte aux Cailles.  There is even a Sponge Bob hanging on a wire on rue Monge, but he doesn' count, he's a heel

Where have you tossed your shoes?  Send me your photos and I’ll post them here.

W is for writer - Glossary of Grafitti

courtesy of WRDSMTH instragram

 Writers are graffers or, as described on freegrafittisupplies, a practioner of writing, a graffiti artist.

Calling a graffer a grafitti artist boils my blood.  Like a practioner of writing is not a writer, or a practioner of sculpture is not a sculptor, painting/painter, illustrating/illustrator, et encore.  In France graffeur is commonly used, even on the tube.  The French, in general, have embraced grafitti and urban art.  Walk around Paris and you'll see that stores are tagging the sidewalks to pub their deals.

The word graffer is not yet in a dictionary because grafitti is taboo. 

Tah-booh. 

Graffers are ghosts with hoodies who roam the urban sleepy hollows and leave their marks.  They don’t carry guns, but they carry bombs (of spray paint, paste-ups and more.)  Urban writing is invisible by most, it's become so commonplace most people don't even notice it's there.  Some consider it vandalism, some of it is.  But some of it is pure art with no profit in mind and it is worldwide.

WRDSMTH works are a combination of pochoir and paste-up.  I assume Wrdsmth is male.  He writes that he’s doing time in Hollywood.  Wrdsmth is a poet graffer, a writing writer.  His pochoirs are a monochrome typewriter and the paste-ups are texts.  

See his Instagram page here: WRDSMTH  and his fabulous Tumblr page

P is for paste-up: glossary of grafitti

What's a paste-up?  Usually it's a peice of paper glued to an urban surface with wheat paste or wall paper glue.  Paste-ups are considered less offensive to the urban envirnoment because they can be peeled or washed off. 

Here is a video of paste-up interventions done by women in Brazil.  They have motive and means.




If you still don't understand paste-up, here are a helping ear and a mutant in Beaubourg.  That's the hood around the Pompidou center.

 

This wall is a busy place.  Those posters might be advertising for underground Parisian rave party in abandoned metro stations or perhaps the catacombs.  We'll see about that next week.

 

Need the missing peice of the puzzle to understand what paste-ups are?  Here you go.

Motive and means: thanks Colin Smith for that great line.  I read it in your story in the comments on Janet Reid's blog.  I give you full credit.

H is for Heaven - glossary of graffiti

 High up on buildings and other spots, writers paint messages and tags.  The idea is to place their designs for maximum visibility, to increase their notoriety.  These peices are also hard to remove.

This one is one of my favorites.  

 

It’s on rue de Rennes.  How did they do it ?  Probably scaled down with climbing gear  and swung across the wall. The smiley mouth is about three meters across.

 Graffiti Heaven by Marita Hansen is worth reading.  It's harsh.

Check out what’s on tumblr under graffiti heaven spot.  You can see it’s extremey dangerous to tag these spots.  Crews of writers use climbing equipment to dangle and spray their works.  Some hang on with one hand over highways.

Writers can fall and die, thus go to heaven.

Here is an imformative video about graffiti art called Heaven Spot.  Why do writers do it?  Not for money.

In Portland they consider this a problem.  One of the graffiti removers talks about it.

Contrary to Portland, Paris embraces street art.  Even stores are using it as publicity to tell us about their back to school sales.

 

The store is just ahead.  Their logo is in the heaven of the hopscotch game.

Heaven is part of my upcoming book.

But in Paris, though there is a tolerance, I wouldn't say they condone tag runs and acid writing.

Here's another tag in heaven.

A is for Acid

 

Acid etches glass.  

What kind of acid? 

Hydroflouric.

Gee, what would it be like to come to work and see this on your window?  Nothing can remove it, just replace the glass.  Freakin expensive.  

 

Here is an article on Worksafe about the risks of using hydroflouric acid to tag.  Watch your skin,  your lungs, etching goes on for days.  There are other products one can use.  Check out art supply stores.  

Is this vandalism?

Tags like this are everywhere but we sort of don't see them. They are on phone booths, mail boxes, subway windows. You name it.

Here is an article in the NY times dating from 2006 about acid tag-etching in the metro.

Paris is the place for street art. Read it here on Bloomberg. 

TH is for throw up

 

Recently I went to Les Docks  on the quai (the banks) of the Seine to see the super hero exibit of Marvel comics at the Musée de l'Art Ludique.  Don't ask me to translate it just click on the link, ok?  Unfortunately we didn't make the exhibition because tickets for that hour were sold out.  Definitely book ahead. We queued up, hoping to enter, but when a lady came out and told us there we'd have to wait at least an hour we moved on and under.

We descended the plank stairs and found an amazing gallery of urban art. 

 

This is a simple throw up or throwie which looks like it was painted over another work, or several.

 

Here are some others.  FCK happens over and over....

see the wino?

So does DERUB.

 

Notice the tags in red underneath, could this be the crew members who frequent the place?  Who knows.

 I like the wild style on the left but the following was the best in the "gallery".

 

It looks lide FCK was part of this.  The whole throw up is not shown because there was a fashion model doing a shoot to the right. 

Most of the cement pillars were painted as well.

 

I guess that this was done not with "bomb" (spray paints) but with acrylic applied with brushes.  LOVE was abundant and so were debutant roller bladers.

 

There were also some guys practicing hip hop.

Judging by the throw ups there is a specific crew of graffuer which inhabits this this place.

wikipedia's glossary of Graffiti

While researching terminology about street art for the manuscript I'm finishing I needed to know some word inherent to tagging.

Wikipedia glossary of graffiti offers an exhaustive list.

Vitry-sur Seine is on my list of places to visit

C215 is the king writer and thanks to his worldwide influence, Vitry's governors opened the city's walls to graffiti artists, thus making it known to international street artists.  Two books are published on Vitry's street art, the first sold out quickly.

Here is one of C215's comissioned murals in Paris's 13th arrondissement.