The Great Mailbox Conspiracy on U Street

Now that I’m back from my travels, I suddenly realized that something terrible has happened in DC while I was gone: someone has stolen all the mail boxes. Or they all got sick of standing around being blue and just took off.

I had a very important letter to mail (or “screed”, as editors and the judiciary all across the land have called them in their “restraining orders”), and I walked all around the neighborhood, down New Hampshire and up 17th, and down 18th and around U Street, and not a mail box was to be found!

I suspect they are congregating somewhere near the river, perhaps in one of the Potomac Parks, maybe near where The Awakening will soon be torn from the ground, saying their good-byes.

Or maybe they are tired of being Borfed, and are staging a mail-in (or squat-in, or sit-there-in, or whatever mail boxes do) at the USPS headquarters building (it’s that big blue rounded-top building in Southwest that always makes me think of grandma - you know the one).

In any case, there are no mail boxes near Coladams Circle, and my screeds are piling up, and we are in danger of suffocation by screed, necessitating more writing of screeds, with no way of emancipating said screeds. Thus the provenance of this blog entry.

Going Out Gurus Love Borf the Leech

Recently, Going Out Guru Julia reviewed the Borf show, The Consolation of Ruin, running through this weekend. The show, in an empty building on North Capitol Street, exhibits graffiti and multi-media stuff.

I usually like reading the GOG column, and while this piece was interesting, I couldn’t help but think that Julia was overly impressed with the whole Borf thing. She seemed infatuated with the “anarchy” of it all, and all but thrilled that she had to be blindfolded and led into the building.

That’s all okay with me. No accounting for taste. But then she writes that the show contains, among other things, a “pretty cool riff on the famous Eddie Adams execution photo made out of smiley-face stickers.”

I had to read that again to make sure I understood: yep. She said it. A “pretty cool riff.” Cool? COOL? COOL? Julia, what the hell is wrong with you? There is nothing romantic or cool or funny or ironic or anarchistic or radical or chic about this picture, about this death. The Borf Brigade appropriated it to use in their little side show of naval-gazing suburban angst because they are ignorant and self-centered. Julia, you should be ashamed of yourself for giving it any kind of credit.

So what’s this Borf show all about? Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years, you know who Borf is. John Tsombikos was arrested in 2005 for spraying paint all over DC, and now owes DC twelve thousand bucks. The Borf Brigade hopes to raise money to help him pay his fine.

Tsombikos (and his Borf Brigade friends) is an artist. What’s more, he’s a protestor, and an anarchist, with important thing to say! Things like “grownups are obsolete” and, as the Washington Post reported in 2005, Borf “…doesn't believe in the state, capitalism, private property, globalization. Most of all, he doesn't believe in adulthood, which he considers ‘boring’ and ‘selling out.’”

I’m not sure if by “doesn’t believe in” he means that he doubts these are real things (sorry, Borf, they do exists), or he simply doesn’t like them.

I suspect it’s the first, because it couldn’t possibly be the second: Borf grew up in Great Falls, pays (or did) to attend the Art school at the Corcoran, apparently eats food and wears clothes, and even drives a car, and the spray paint he uses doesn’t grow on trees. All these things, plus the huge amount of free time and the freedom to come and go as he pleases, are all the products of “the state, capitalism, private property, globalization,” and yes, most definitely, “adulthood.”

Sorry, Borf (and your brigade), you’re a hypocrite.

Like all anarchists, Borf wants to believe that he supports the oppressed and down-trodden, the workers and the poor. But these are the very people who do things like go to work every day at places like spray paint factories so he can have something to steal from paint stores, where other working people work. You know why they work? So they can eat. And pay rent. (Steal enough paint, Borf, and they won’t have jobs any more.) Not everyone grew up in Great Falls, Borf.

And then people like me and the Metro bus driver and the bar tender and the bookstore owner and the minister and the paper seller and the packer truck driver and everyone else who lives in DC (but ironically, no one who lives in Great Falls) have to pay to have Borf’s spray paint washed off or covered up.

Borf Brigade, why not go out and study drawing and painting, and maybe a little history and literature while you’re at it, and then spend a few years working really, really hard learning to make the best art you can while trying to earn a living. Or, is hard work and studying and paying your own goddamn way also things anarchists don’t believe in?

Suburban Youth Teach U Street A Lesson

MAGIC TRAGIC 2AM, NEHI, and so on. A couple mornings each week as I walk down U Street, I see the latest angry expressions that the oppressed masses of disenfranchised white middleclass suburban youths have spray painted onto my neighborhood’s buildings, bus stops, and sidewalks. Much like the ’05 Parisian riots of unemployed and shunned suburban youths, or the riots that tore apart this same stretch of U Street 40 years ago, these youths are expressing their outrage at the injustices they see all around them.

Apparently, this group of (sub)urban radicals has put together a searing manifesto, which includes such items as “one of the five televisions in my house may not be working”, “my parents didn’t (that’s right, DID NOT) buy me the latest nano for Christmas,” and “first Napster, and now just possibly Pandora!” One cannot help but sympathize.

In a show of solidarity, I suggest that the residents of DC take it to the streets (or the Drives or Courts or Cul-de-sacs or whatever). Let’s head out to Silver Spring and Bethesda and Wheaton and express our own outrage on their buildings and bus stops and sidewalks (if they have sidewalks, that is)! Meet me at the Duron Paint store on 14th Street in Columbia Heights tonight just before closing. Wear your most tattered hoody and we’ll head out to commit acts of, well, random vandalism, I guess.

I’m open to suggestions as to what to what our "tag" should be. It has to be of course cryptic, have a rather loose relationship with grammar, and strike fear into the hearts of suburbanites. I’ve come up with a few ideas, like “COMMUTER TOLLS ARE GOING TO GET YOU” or “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE? (HINT: IN DC, AT NIGHT, WITH SPRAY PAINT!)” or “PLEASE DON’T RUN ME DOWN JUST BECAUSE I’M WALKING”; but perhaps those are too long and violate the “cryptic” mandate.

Or maybe DC should institute a new curfew, but only on white suburban kids.