Greetings

 

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The Festive Season is upon us and, in response, the blizzard of pavement markings in Sydney’s central business district has taken on an appropriately merry appearance, with designs based on traditional Christmas colours.

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about ‘Sydney street scribbles’ goes some way to translating what these symbols indicate about the pipes and cables buried beneath the pavement. However, here is my alternative translation of the photograph above, taken on the corner of George and Bathurst Streets.

It is a double manhole or service cover, cleverly decorated to represent a Gingerbread House covered in snowy frosting. There are fairy lights draped on the roof and hanging by the window and front door. The chimney, in the shape of a Christmas stocking, also has fairy lights. These are focussed on a point in the sky (E9-1) which may be interpreted either as the star in the EAST, or the route Santa’s sleigh will take on Christmas EVE.

The ELVES who live in the manhole gingerbread house have festooned it with codified greetings to Sydneysiders as they go about their daily work. E1, for example, stands for EXPRESSIONS of cheer to each and every one of you; E4 means EVERY good wish for the New Year. F10 is an interesting one. It reads FORGIVE us for any TENsion or aesthetic discomfort we may have caused by making such an unholy mess of Sydney’s bluestone footpaths.

Chunky body

I am writing this blog post from Antwerp in Belgium, where I am attending a Summer School in Visualising Urban Culture. Before I left Sydney I did a quick scout around some local streets, to catch up on any pavement graffiti I might have missed.

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I found this body outline in a back street of Camperdown. A number of graffiti artists have utilized the walls of this closed-down factory building (now being renovated, presumably into desirable inner-city apartments). I don’t know why one of them turned their attention to the asphalt, but I like this chunky body on the road. It exemplifies my arrival in Antwerp. I hit the ground running and have been flat out ever since.

Imitations of Eternity

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Will Coles (aka Numb) is a guerrilla street artist who knows a thing or two about aphorisms. His casts of consumerism’s cast-offs often bear one-word invitations to think deeply about the shallowness of present-day culture. So perhaps it was inevitable that he would eventually appropriate Arthur Stace’s single-word sermon, ‘Eternity’.

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Thanks to my loyal band of spotters, I was able to find and photograph several of Will’s ‘Eternity’ drink cans this weekend. They were stuck to the stanchions of Sydney’s now defunct monorail, a train that went from nowhere to nowhere and connected to nothing. The monorail closed down at the end of June after uglifying the streets of Sydney for 25 years. Most people would say good riddance but Will had apparently found it a great space for his mini-installations. As a farewell gesture he hit it hard with his works last week, and by the time I got down to Pitt Street many of them had been souvenired while others had been damaged, presumably in an attempt to remove them.

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Will Coles is an artist who straddles both the gallery and the street scene. A more dignified example of his work is currently on show at the high end of town, in a window of the Optiver Building in Hunter Street.

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(My earlier blog posts about ‘Eternity’ can be found here and here, and Will Coles’s work pops up here, here and here)

 

Three degrees of permanency

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Some time in the past this arrow-shaped survey mark has been chiselled into the concrete kerb of Regent Street, Redfern (Sydney). It will last as long as the kerb does. But to make it more visible it has been painted blue. Eventually the paint will be weathered away. Last week there was a man surveying the boundaries of a property that adjoins the pedestrian laneway off Regent Street. So that he could see where the survey mark was through his theodolite, he had stuck a red and white post-it note next to it. The post-it note was probably gone by the next day, blown away by the wind.

I have only presumed that’s what the post-it note was for. I don’t really understand survey marks. I wish I had thought to ask the surveyor about this one. But anyway, I have contacted Scott Taylor at the Global Surveyors website and invited him to comment on this Pavement Graffiti post. According to a blog post by Scott about ‘Interesting survey marks’, surveyors like him are magnetically attracted to survey marks in kerbs, roads and bridges, and drive their friends crazy saying, “Look, there’s a level datum”. Here at Pavement Graffiti we understand this level of fanaticism.

Christian graffiti

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Following on from my earlier post about Eternity, I’ve noticed that someone regularly chalks Praise God! on kerbs in Glebe Point Road (Sydney), often at bus stops. It’s not the only piece of Christian graffiti I’ve come across on the ground, although I have more frequently found graffiti that mocks religion. Photos of these jokes and snide remarks are posted in my Pavement Appreciation gallery.

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People have used the pavement for affirmation of their Christianity from very early times, as evidenced at the remains of the formerly important Roman city of Ephesus, located in the east of what is now Turkey. Ephesus is mentioned in the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Among the archaeological finds are symbols carved into the paving stones of the Arcadian Way. These symbols are made up of a set of Greek letters that have been interpreted by classics scholars as standing for ‘Jesus Christ Saviour Son of God’.

The following photograph was posted by aaron60 in his Ephesus Travel Page on the Virtual Tourist website. At least two of these segmented circular Christian symbols can be seen.

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Eternity revisited

I have talked about ‘Eternity’ before, so please excuse my return to the subject, which has been prompted by two quite different sightings this week.

Arthur Stace, ‘The Eternity Man’, stealthily chalked the word ‘Eternity’ on Sydney pavements from the 1930s to the 1960s. Even though Sydney is often accused of being a shallow and superficial city, Sydneysiders still perpetuate the memory of Stace’s one-word warning. Last Monday, for example, I found it chalked on the footpath in Pitt Street near Bridge Street, just round the corner from the Stock Exchange. It was written neatly but the handwriting did not approach Stace’s masterly copperplate.

'Eternity', Pitt Street, Sydney, 2013 (photo by meganix).

‘Eternity’, Pitt Street, Sydney, 2013 (photo by meganix).

If you believe in the afterlife, ‘Eternity’ is a powerful reminder to examine the deeds of your present life to ensure you will enter the kingdom of heaven. It was a sermon by evangelical Baptist, the Reverend John Ridley, that inspired the recently-converted Stace to embark on his footpath mission. “Where will you spend eternity?”, thundered the preacher.

But even for non-Christian Sydneysiders, ‘Eternity’ has resonance. Is it simply that they embrace the novelty of a home-grown eccentric who mysteriously but doggedly left his mark on city streets for over thirty years?

Or is there some deeper feeling involved? Does Stace’s message touch on an unspoken guilt about the kind of legacy Sydneysiders will leave?  In the very centre of the city is Sydney Harbour, so beautiful with its sparkling water and tree-lined coves, that is easy for people to be reminded how this place might have been before empire-building ambitions laid waste the bush and scattered its original inhabitants.

Perhaps I am wrong about this. Perhaps we should not look to cultural commentators like me, or historians, poets and artists, for an interpretation that explains the appeal of ‘Eternity’. Perhaps instead we should look to the manufacturers of facial tissues.

On Friday I lunched at a bowling club ‘bistro’ in Liverpool, a city some 40 km west of the centre of Sydney. Instead of paper serviettes there was a box of ‘Eternity’ brand tissues on each table. These are apparently manufactured in a Sydney suburb and the typography used for the name cannot be a coincidence. So for me it was particularly interesting to read the vacuous message on the box that was meant to complement the inspiring brand name: ‘Pursue in your dreams and anything is possible’.

'Eternity' tissues, 2013 (photo by meganix).

‘Eternity’ tissues, 2013 (photo by meganix).

 

The symbolism of pedestrian crossings

In built-up areas the pedestrian crossing is a familiar feature of the horizontal signscape. William Phelps Eno, sometimes known as the ‘father of traffic safety’ is credited with introducing the cross-walk to New York streets in the early 1900s. Once motorized vehicles became popular, something had to be done to protect pedestrians from reckless drivers.

Sydney was one of many cities that soon followed suit. As early as 1912 lines were painted on the road at busy Circular Quay to provide a safe crossing area.  Within a few years designated pedestrian crossings in the rest of the city were being marked out with metal studs or pairs of white lines. Designs for crossings have continued to change over the years.

A stopping line at the intersection of Market and Pitts Streets in Sydney, marked out with metal studs, 1929 (City of Sydney Archives photograph, SRC7806, file 034\034213).

A stopping line at the intersection of Market and Pitts Streets in Sydney, marked out with metal studs, 1929 (City of Sydney Archives photograph, SRC7806, file 034\034213).

For some people, pedestrian crossings represent order, civilization and safety. For others they represent repression and regimentation of people’s behaviour.

Fake pedestrian crossing, ‘Design saves lives’, an entrant in the Eye Saw exhibition in Omnibus Lane, Ultimo during Sydney Design Week, 2006 (photo by meganix).

Fanciful pedestrian crossing, ‘Design saves lives’, an entrant in the Eye Saw exhibition in Omnibus Lane, Ultimo during Sydney Design Week, 2006 (photo by meganix).

Some pedestrian crossings have achieved iconic status. The most famous is the crossing featured on the cover of the Beatle’s 1969 LP Abbey Road. Photographed by thousands of fans and tourists emulating the Fab Four crossing the road near their recording studio in single file, this ‘modest structure’ (to quote an official of English Heritage) has been given heritage listing for its ‘cultural and historical importance’.

The original photograph has been recently used in a pedestrian safety campaign in the Indian City of Calcutta.

Road safety poster using Ian Macmillan’s famous 1969 photograph, issued by the Kolkata [Calcutta] Traffic Police in February 2013.

Road safety poster using Ian Macmillan’s famous 1969 photograph, issued by the Kolkata [Calcutta] Traffic Police in February 2013.

And then there’s the Rainbow Crossing at Taylor Square in Sydney’s gay precinct of Darlinghurst. When it was removed by the State Government some people were glad, with one newspaper letter-writer declaring that ‘compulsory pieces of public infrastructure should not force upon pedestrians political views which contravene their religious or moral conscience’.

The disappeared Rainbow Crossing at Taylor Square and a notice about a rally for marriage equality, April 2013 (photo by meganix).

The disappeared Rainbow Crossing at Taylor Square and a notice about a rally for marriage equality, April 2013 (photo by meganix).

However such views were drowned out by the groundswell of outrage that manifested itself in the DIY Rainbow Crossing protest. It is significant that this is all going on at the same time as the parliament of Australia’s neighbour  New Zealand had done what no Australian government will do and legalised same-sex marriage.

A painted DIY Rainbow Crossing in Jones Street, Ultimo (Sydney), April 2013 (photo by meganix).

A painted DIY Rainbow Crossing in Jones Street, Ultimo (Sydney), April 2013 (photo by meganix).

Mind you, as Lawrence Gibbons in City News points out, having created a public relations coup with the DIY Rainbow Crossings, Lord Mayor Clover Moore is left with a dilemma. Under policies implemented during her nine-year tenure, any street art, graffiti or posters in the City of Sydney must be removed from any highly visible site within twenty four hours. Under this ruling, the council’s scrubbing machines should be out there right now removing the rainbows.

 

A colourful story

This is a story about vindictiveness and vindication. On the face of it, it’s about gay pride and support for the gay and lesbian (LGBTQI) community. But it’s also about me, me, me and my Pavement graffiti project.

It all started with a pedestrian crossing at Taylor Square on Oxford Street that the City of Sydney Council painted in rainbow colours for the 2013 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in February-March. It was supposed to be temporary but Sydneysiders wanted it to stay.

Rainbow crossing, Taylor Square, Sydney, March 2013

Rainbow crossing, Taylor Square, Sydney, March 2013

The State Government declared it was a safety hazard and during the night on 10 April it sent in a crew to rip up the rainbow and repave the road. This is where the vindictiveness comes in. Many people saw this action as part of an ongoing campaign by  State Premier Barry O’Farrell to ‘Get Clover’ – Clover Moore, that is, the longstanding Lord Mayor of Sydney. Asphalt used as a political weapon. Here’s a newspaper report and video of the dastardly deed.

Rainbow crossing at Taylor Square replaced by grey asphalt, April 2013

Rainbow crossing at Taylor Square replaced by grey asphalt, April 2013

By the end of the week there were rainbow ribbons and flags flying around Taylor Square to mark the passing of the crossing.

Memorial rainbow ribbons, Taylor Square, 14 April 2013

Memorial rainbow ribbons, Taylor Square, 14 April 2013

But even more astounding, in protest against the Government’s action, a viral campaign to draw DIY rainbow crossings in chalk took off in Sydney, around Australia, and in other parts of the world.

DIY rainbow crossing, Forbes Street, just a few metres from Taylor Square, 14 April 2013

DIY rainbow crossing, Forbes Street, just a few metres from Taylor Square, 14 April 2013

Around where I live you can’t walk up the street without tripping over a rainbow.

Rainbow crossing outside Goulds Book Arcade, King Street, Newtown, 14 April 2013

Rainbow crossing outside Goulds Book Arcade, King Street, Newtown, 14 April 2013

And this is the vindication part. ‘Pavement graffiti’ may seem like an obscure and even unworthy subject on which to base a PhD and many people just don’t get it. But in the very week that I finish writing the thesis, along comes this hotly debated story to demonstrate that PAVEMENT MARKS MATTER. (It’s also left me wondering whether I should open up the thesis again and add an epilogue about rainbow crossings.)

 

Pavement pedantry

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‘The path of least resistance’, King Street, Newtown (Sydney), 2012

Here’s another one of those pedantic vocabulary posts. We’ve already done ‘sgraffito/ graffiti’ and ‘palimpsest’. Now it’s time to do ‘pavement’ because I got another email this week querying why I use that term.  In Australia, says my correspondent, we more commonly use the term ‘footpath’.  Trouble is, dear correspondent, that this blog – and indeed my whole Pavement graffiti project – is meant for an international audience, and in any case I’m obsessed with graffiti not only on places where people walk, but also on the hard surfaces where they normally drive, ride, skate and park.

It’s a tricky problem of vocabulary that I have never properly resolved. But here is how I justified using the term ‘pavement’ in my thesis. It comes with a lengthy footnote:

“By ‘pavement’ I mean hard, paved surfaces in public places. These include roads (or ‘carriageways’ in older terminology), footpaths (‘footways’ in older Australian terminology, ‘sidewalks’ in America), public squares and parking lots. Their paving materials range from cobblestones and flagstones to tarmacadam, asphalt and concrete.

“Footnote: The term ‘pavement’ can be problematic in that usage varies across English-speaking countries. Respondents to my blog, Pavement graffiti, have pointed out that people in Britain usually think of the pavement as a paved footway; in Australia this seems to be the more generally accepted meaning as well, although the term ‘footpath’ is more widely used. In American English the term ‘pavement’ is used for ‘the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway’ (see the entry for Road surface in Wikipedia, accessed 3 March 2013).

“The Oxford English Dictionary’s list of definitions of ‘pavement’ covers all these uses. Condensed, the OED’s meanings (excluding the specialised mining and zoological uses), are: a paved surface or hard covering laid on the ground (used chiefly in technical contexts); paving or similar surfacing (used as a mass noun); the paved or metalled part of a road or other public thoroughfare or the roadway (used chiefly in North America and in Engineering); a paved footpath alongside a street or road (but the preferred term in North America is ‘sidewalk’) (see the entry for pavement in OED Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 20 March 2013).

“In my extensive reading of current as well as older references – mainly from Australia, but also from Britain and USA – I have seen the term ‘pavement’ variously used by both engineers and laypeople to refer to the paved surfaces of roads, of footpaths alone, and of roads and footpaths. For my project I have chosen to use ‘pavement’ in this last, broad sense because it is the only term available that can collectively refer to all the different kinds of hard surface laid down on the ground for ease of passage, whether by wheels, feet or hooves.”

Does that help?

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‘New ashphelt’, Broadway (Sydney), 2013.

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