hello, brown.

the gowanus has always been one of my favorite neighborhoods, it's a nice mix of industrial and residential spaces. old and new, tucked away in the no mans land between park slope, carroll gardens and red hook. it has also been, these past few years, a great spot to check out some really great street art. on sunday i decided to take the bike out for a spin and as there were a couple of revs pieces that i wanted to shoot, i headed in the direction of gowanus. i was across the 3rd street bridge and about to make a right on bond street when i noticed that someone had come along with some brown spray paint and painted over an old elbow-toe . curious, i decided to look around the corner and check out another spot that had been appropriated. this one had also been sprayed with the same brown spray paint-- as had a gore b below it. continuing down bond, i decided to have a look at first street (which was a pretty busy street for street art last summer when the empty vessel project was parked at the end of the block). to my disgust, the same person had come along and hit the remains of a swoon, three elbow-toe's, a cheekz, teo and a clever stencil. they also defaced a small sign which read "toll ahead" in reference to the new toll brothers construction project going up at the end of the block. oopps. lastly, as i was riding off, i noticed that our friend "mr. brown" had hit up another swoon, the remains of an armsrock, an elbow-toe stencil and the elbow-toe pasteup that has graced the abandoned building on union, at bond, for almost a year.

after the splasher nonsense it's hard to get too upset about street art getting defaced, after all it (for the most part) is pretty temporary stuff that is put up without the property owners permission. but still, it's kind of upsetting that someone would go out of their way (and over a 10 block radius) to sloppily spray a can of brown paint for a few seconds on each piece. some people love street art and some don't, but personally i would rather see something interesting and thought provoking on the wall then a brown scrawl.