Tattoos and Graffiti on a T-Shirt made in China

Great urbanism, lousy programming.

My fellow townspeople often confuse the architecture and urban design with the activity taking place in it. It's an important distinction. The building itself, shown here, is a sturdy but unspectacular business building on the main street (Broadway) of Saratoga Springs, NY. Think of it as a "background building." It's not trying to be special or monumental, but it does what we want it to do: it makes provision for retail near the street and it allows other activities upstairs (offices, apartments). It accomplishes all this complexity gracefully. The activity taking place here, however, is a symptom of the growing barbarism in American life. Tattooing has traditionally been a marginal activity among civilized people, the calling card of cannibals, sailors, and whores. The appropriate place for it is on the margins, in the back alleys, the skid rows. The mainstreaming of tattoos (on main street) is a harbinger of social dysfunction.

An interesting opinion from Howard Kunstler than I'm actually inclined to agree with. Now before you go spurting in the comments about your truly artistic and unique tattoo that affirms your individualism please think about the implication. Somehow we manage to laugh at kids cutting themselves ("emo kids"). But when brutal acts like tattooing are formalized as a common social statement, one that is increasingly mainstream, we figure this is just the advancement of an underprivileged art form? In this respect I'm inclined to agree with Kunstler in saying that it's an indication of an increasingly barbaric culture. I'd love to correlate instances of tattooing before and after 9/11/2001.

Pixação graffiti movement members defacing an art gallery in São Paulo, Brazil to protest
against the ‘marketing, institutionalization and domestication of street art’

It's cool if you're kinky and enjoy the pain, honestly. And I've seen some tattoos that are thoughtful, personal and artistic. Those examples are a rare minority and overall tattooing is much like graffiti to me in it's trajectory through the overall culture. But I think most importantly I love the ability that cities have to indicate the overall health, status and mood of a culture.