10/05/2010

Graffiti

I went with friends on Sunday to the Live Graffiti Battle taking place in Oakland. While we were supposed to have met up with them at 3 pm, the bus not only came late, but the bus driver decided to chat to passengers waiting at the bus stops instead of driving to the next stop. When I planned the trip using the bus schedules, I allowed myself 15 minutes in order to transfer to the next bus at MacArthur Bart.

Unfortunately, when I got there, the 26 had just left and the next bus wouldn't be there for another half-hour. So I decided that I would walk down to Market and attempt to catch the 88 instead. After hitting Market I realized waiting for the bus would probably take about as long for me to just walk to the event, so I decided to walk along the 88 bus route until I hit 18th, at which I would walk down to Adeline. If the bus came during that time I would catch it, if not, I'd be there anyway.

I managed to walk the entire way from the Bart to the Park without seeing one bus >.< When I got there, my friend told me that I had essentially walked ~25 blocks in one of the worst parts of Oakland - West Oakland. Surprisingly I thought the area I walked through was pretty nice, for Oakland at least.

In any case, we had a fabulous time looking at all the pretty art pieces that were created, did some drawing, and got hungry because we didn't want to pay for food. I had 3 favorite pieces and apparently they were all Bay Area style graffiti, which is logical considering I don't even know what the difference between Bay Area style and Brooklyn style is.




We didn't stick around long enough to hear who the winner was; it got really cold and the sun hid behind lots of clouds so we decided to leg it and go eat dinner. 

They had other cool things to see and do besides the watching the graffiti artists. There were large pictures with oil pastels for people to color, stencils to spray-paint whatever you want, a random graffiti-ed car, a skate-park, and a dance floor. We saw some tiny kids skateboarding at the makeshift park and they were doing tricks! I noticed one guy in his 20s blading like Apolo Ohno and doing really cool rail tricks. Overall it was a fun day filled with lots of art.


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