Annual holiday-themed graffiti brightens up a drab freeway overpass in Salt Lake City.
Small Lake City
By Bryant Heath
As someone who has extensively chronicled Salt Lake City streets through photographs over the past several years, I can say it's undeniable that there has been an uptick in graffiti. It's pretty pervasive: on walls, on electrical junction boxes, on lampposts and even on rooftops. It can be found everywhere in the city, from far west along 8000 West to the easternmost portion up the Wasatch Mountains—here's looking at you, H-Rock and all its variants.
But is this bad? Like most things in life, context is everything and the answer is probably "it depends."
There is general disapproval when works of art like the Constellation Owl mural on State Street and 200 South (by renowned artist Yvette Vexta) gets tagged by the prolific ZOOT and WOE. But local businesses—like Veggie House at 1700 S. State Street—may opt to allow or even commission graffiti artists to provide a fresh new take on their branding.
My personal favorite type of graffiti, though, is the innocuous kind: ones that are clever with their defacement, bringing more smiles than dissatisfied looks when passersby come across them. Lower Avenues residents may have seen the simple graffiti at the intersection of P Street and South Temple, which transformed the stamped "P ST" on the sidewalk into "PASTA" by squeezing two stenciled "A"s into the street name.
Another text-based subversive conversion occurred at the former home of the Even Stevens sandwich shop. Remaining abandoned for some time now, the signage at their former Sugar House location on 2100 South and 1700 East got a sly update from "Even" to "Evan"—most likely a nod to the ingenious perpetrator—which went unnoticed for quite some time.
But by far the most well-received graffiti has to be the annual Christmas message the QX Crew emblazes on the side of an overpass near the I-15 on-ramp at 900 South/West Temple (photo above). Whereas early editions would get buffed in a matter of weeks—if not days—this year's "All I Want 4 QXMas Is U" remained for a full month before getting scrubbed after the holidays.
Maybe UDOT is a big Mariah Carey fan, or maybe they are just coming around to how graffiti, occasionally, can be fun.
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