When the unofficial street art park / cafe was closed and fenced off to the public for reasons that were never explained it made me kind of mad. The people who were doing the pieces there were seriously talented and both artists and regular people would flock to this place, spend a few dollars on the coffee and sit in the shade to watch someone do a craft that not many people know about. Then, for reasons that nobody ever explained, a fence was put up around the unused land the the makeshift lean-to coffee stand was torn down.
The land remains unused to this day and they weren't hurting anyone. If anything they were preventing vandalism elsewhere because every now and then the person who would run the coffee shop would paint over the older ones to make room for new people to try it. Therefore, I started to notice a big downturn in the amount of vandalism that was happening elsewhere because the street artists could not take their time and didn't have to worry about getting busted.
But it all went away and now it appears as though a new one might be popping up near the same area in the neighborhood.
The red crap in the background was just some awful trash by someone talentless as well as a Telegram advert for weed and also call girls, then someone came along with the Yellow big letters and while it isn't great, it is certainly a lot better than the red trash. You will notice that nobody has painted over the yellow letters either because as I have heard in these circles, street taggers respect one another's work and will not paint over it.
Then the HGT appeared a few days ago. I do not think that this is particularly good, but it does have some character to it.
This plot of land is a strange one because I remember the days that the demolition crew came by and gave the people who were in that space something crazy like 24 hours to vacate the premises. One of them was the place where me and a lot of locals get their hair cut. Then after they did a super rushed job to tear it all down they just walked away and then nothing happened with the land at all. That was more than a year ago. So why the rush?
The land has just been vacant ever since and as is often the case in Vietnam, it is a dumping point for trash of all sorts. This hasn't happened too much because this street is busy enough that a truck backing up to dump a bunch of construction debris would definitely be noticed and probably filmed. But the people who are making these tags seem to have a sort of system where they can come by under cover of darkness and get this done relatively quickly.
I was having a coffee the other day at one of the shops there and noticed 3 lads that were clearly staking the place out and taking photos of the wall and the space that remains. I would imagine that they are making a plan to add to it. There isn't much reason to be doing what they were doing other than that. It was a team of 3 guys and hopefully they have a plan for something a bit more exotic than just a few letters like what is up there now.
In the meantime though this is definitely
spray and there is some level of talent involved in it so I welcome it. Even though this is still illegal and yes, it is vandalism, that building that they are painting on will eventually be built on by another building so it is not like they are destroying someone's property permanently. I don't think it is ok to paint other people's property without permission but it is well known that this spot is going to be covered with another building at some point and I kind of appreciate how the taggers seem to have some level of respect for property. Once the new build starts they will cease to paint on it. Perhaps this is because if the police were to catch people that are doing this they might not even punish them because everyone knows that this will be covered up quite soon... well as soon as someone coughs up the extortionate amount of money they are currently asking for land in this part of Vietnam anyway.