Photopost: Graffiti in Saskatoon

[yuuago]

I've been meaning to put this up for a while, but just hadn't gotten around to it. I think I took these photos last month. Part of it is in the neighbourhood area, and the rest was taken under the Broadway Bridge by the river.


Okay, first we have some graffiti from the neighbourhood. Normally I don't see too much of it in places where people live, but this case is different. Someone put up a plain fence and invited people to leave messages on it. Most of them are very hippy-ish, environmentally-focused. That might partly be because I live in a very hippy-ish area.



General large view of the fence



Subtitle for the graffiti invitation




Commentary on energy use



Environmental issues Re: bottled water




"In the sea of shadows, some swim, some survive... but too many are lost beneath the waves"



More social commentary



The fence-photos were taken on a different day than the bridge graffiti. For the bridge, I went because I had caught sight of some new and interesting graffiti while walking home on the bridge. I needed to get a closer look!



For those who haven't seen any Saskatchewan photos before, here we go. This is a view of the Saskatchewan River from the Broadway Bridge, looking toward downtown.



Along the riverbank are tons of huge rocks, and some people do some really interesting graffiti there.



Close-ups of rock graffiti, taken from up on the bridge



Under the bridge, on the Broadway side. Most of the under-bridge graffiti isn't as nice as the rock stuff, though sometimes there are interesting things. Usually it's just, you know, stuff done by people who go down there to get high.



Close-up of the poster under the bridge

And now, on to the actual rock graffiti.



Frequently, if the painting is not an image, it'll be a positive message like this one.



I really, really wish I knew the story behind this one!



"Love life". This message was painted at several different points.



Abstract art? Trying to use up left-over paint? Who knows!



Volcano! Some of the other paintings were just random pictures like this, as well, but most of them weren't quite as nice.



Argh, I can't make this one out... pretty sure it says "Live 4 the moment"



Excellent design in this one, I think.



"Love is Life - Love is Light"

When I was crawling around on the rocks, I came across this marking:



"Unsatisfied Poets". Then, as I went around more, I found this piece of paper taped to a rock:



"Today @ 7 PM: Unsatisfied Poets". I have no idea who the Unsatisfied Poets are, but I'm extremely curious! ...Anyway.



This little painting was tiny, about the size of my hand.



This is the mysterious Swedish flag that I caught sight of from the bridge. I'm pretty sure it was painted in either July or August, because I hadn't seen it before (I go crawling all over those rocks more frequently than you might think)



Close-up of the animal (what is that?) and the accompanying text. I'm not quite sure what the text means.

Last of all, I came across this strange thing written on one of the rocks:



What is this? I don't even know what language it is. It doesn't look like anything that I'm familiar with. Help, guys?

Anyway. That concludes this little tour of graffiti in the Broadway area. Hope you enjoyed. ;p

Comments

[noonish.livejournal.com]

FFFFFFFFF this is way better than our graffiti man. I'm jealous.

[yuuago]

I know, eh.

Clearly you need to come here and ~experience~ it for real 8D

[noonish.livejournal.com]

do i also need to try canadian taco dip

[yuuago]

Yes

You need to come to Canada. And make taco dip.

[tatoeba-tadayou.livejournal.com]

the flag-animal looks like a rampant griffon.

[yuuago]

Aha! Figured it'd be some sort of technical heraldry thing like that. Thanks. <3

[sasha2999.livejournal.com]

Oh wow those messages on the fence were cool, and the rock graffiti is so interesting to look at! The people that did them came up with some nice imaginative things. Plus yey Swedish flag~ That last one sure is a mystery though.

Ohh also the photo from the Broadway Bridge is gorgeous!

[yuuago]

Yesss. I love it whenever I come across something other than the usual gang signs and scribbled "X wuz here" that I used to see in my hometown. People can get so awesomely creative sometimes.

I'm still baffled as to why someone painted the Swedish flag, though. It's so... random, for this area.

[truffle.livejournal.com]

All of these are so cute compared to the stuff around where I live, aww...!

[yuuago]

I know, eh? In the other places I've lived, I haven't encountered anything quite like it.

[sabrtooth.livejournal.com]

One day I will come up with a neat design to go paint on one of your rocks up there. Maybe learn some runes.

It's really something that the graffiti on the fence is actually coherent and reasonable. I can only imagine the dicks around here complaining about football rivalries and alcohol. Maybe if someone created such a fence and had friends put up the first few statements to get it going, but somehow I still suspect it would just get trashed regardless of the neighborhood it went in.

OH! This reminds me! I took this in downtown Dallas.

Best guess is the images of disaster had the person going on about the ol' Mayan Apocalypse of 2012.


Humm. What a mystery on that last rock. No telling if the apostrophes indicate slang or actual functions of language. Doesn't help the last line has letters written backwards--no telling whether that was aesthetics or meant something. If I could devote another life to linguistics and cryptography I would.

[yuuago]

Sigh. 2012 AGAIN?

But anyway. Yeah, I was pretty surprised that the fence graffiti is all coherent. All of it, even the stuff I didn't photograph. It makes me so happy.

The last one is really confusing me and I'm just like, argh, WTF IS THIS

[chinomi.livejournal.com]

M-My childhood.

[yuuago]

Do you get a ~nostalgia rush~ when I do these posts? ;p

[chinomi.livejournal.com]

I JUST MAY.
MIGHT.

yeah i do

[yuuago]

Yessss be envious 8D Most of the stuff I've encountered before isn't so bad, but this is the first city where I've seen graffiti that's actually pretty.

To be honest, I'm tempted to go down there and do my own, though I'm not sure what to put yet.

[confictionery.livejournal.com]

Wow. You'd think, living in the Bay Area, not an hours' drive south of San Francisco, I'd see graffiti like this. But I don't, I see the typical gang insignias and stale teenage rebellion under bridges and on fences.

I don't think this is silly at all, I actually think all that is something quite beautiful. The rock paintings especially, I've never seen anything like that. (Is that the Golden Gate I spy?)

[yuuago]

Clearly Saskatoon is a ~hippie oasis~ in this Endless Field of Wheat.

Yeah, I haven't really run into this sort of thing before. Stoon is ~unique~ like this, I guess. (And I do believe it is supposed to be, yes!)

[anasyrma.livejournal.com]

WHAT'S YOUR BEEEF.

H-have you left your own graffiti? $_$

[yuuago]

MY BEEF is that it is late and my homies are not online. WTF is this :|

And I haven't yet. Need to think of something good first <3

[erikaaah.livejournal.com]

O_O

I want to go there.

[yuuago]

There isn't much that's special here; not much to do. But I must admit, it's a pretty nice city if all you want to do is hang out and chill. ;p

[hokuton_punch]

Damn, that is some FANTASTIC graffiti. *_* SASKATOON IS SO NEAT, and has a lovely river! ♥

[yuuago]

YES IT IS. Clearly you should come here someday. 8D

[jesusphreaq.livejournal.com]

The graffiti I want a closer look at is that guy who had graffiti artists paint Where the Wild Things Are on his fence! O_O I only got a glimpse of it out the car window once, but it looked AMAZING. I don't remember what street it's on though...

[yuuago]

Wait, what
DUDE. That is so cool! I kinda' wish I could see it~

[jesusphreaq.livejournal.com]

I KNOW RIGHT. It's gorgeous. I'll see if I can find out more info about it... but I remember that it's somewhere on the path from Lawson Heights area to downtown, and you probably haven't much reason to go over there...

[seaster.livejournal.com]

Oh, hippie grafitti! How cute. <3

The mysterious animal by the Swedish flag is a griffin, and it can be explained by the word - Mariefred. It's a city close to Stockholm which was founded by Bo Jonsson Griffin is the 1370s. Mystery solved. :3

[yuuago]

Ee, I love my city. There's not much to do here, but it's adorable.

And, AHA. MYSTERY SOLVED. 8D Thank you darlin', you're fabulous.
(Now I'm just left to wonder how someone from there ended up here...)

[m4n14c.livejournal.com]

_{(...you're asking this even though you know how many swedish stalkers you have? 8D)}

[yuuago]

(Pfft, well, when you put it that way...!)

[katfur.livejournal.com]

That is all rather epic.

So late, hahaha

[chikotori.livejournal.com]

Oh my, your place is so beautiful. The picture of the river is like a postcard.
And the 'Unsatisfied Poets' thing is intriguing. I'm imagining a group of budding poets getting together to read their ranty poems to each other.

Also, the writing in the last photo reminds me of the signboards I see in the Arab/Lebanese area.

Re: So late, hahaha

[yuuago]

Yes, it's so lovely here~ Even better in person, though.

I did a little poking around and found out that the Unsatisfied Poets are actually a rap/spoken-word-poetry band. Not quite the literary vision I had in mind.