A while ago there was an unused plot of land that someone put a pretty decent tag or street art up in, then another one appeared, then another. Finally a guy went and put a small coffeeshack in the middle of it and would sell really cheap coffee and then people would come and watch the street artists do their thing. For me this was really interesting because even though I really like street art, I have no idea how to actually do any of it.
The problem likely was that the guy who had the coffee shack almost certainly didn't own the land nor have the right to tell people that they could paint there but here's the thing.... people were going to paint there ANYWAY and by having onlookers around during the day and evening it kind of ensures that the art was at least going to be quality. Nobody was going to come up there and spray some trash in front of all those people.
A lot has changed since those days. This plot of land has been marked off with fences twice, and twice those fences have been removed. All for reasons I do not know. There was never any building going on - which is strange because building is happening basically everywhere else - but one point they did store a crane here. Now the fences are all gone and the area just gets used for garbage dumping by construction crews. It was so much better off when it was a street-art park because at least then the guy with the coffee shack was trying to keep it somewhat clean.
Also, while the fence was up next to that cement where the car is parked, people still painted the opposite wall but because they were not allowed to do this and could be seen by a lot of witnesses, the work they did is straight up trash. It doesn't look even a little bit good because how can it? They had to do it really fast and run away.
The gigantic building to the north of the property hasn't moved an inch as far as progressing the build is concerned, and this is really strange because if you look in any direction around this building, almost all of the land has either finished a tall build, or is in the process of making one. I can only guess that there was some sort of building code violation on this shell of a building because why would someone come along and build from scratch at great expense rather than just come in an finish this one that is already more than 50% of the way finished? There's more to meets the eye in this story, that's for sure.
I will not forget the time that the graffiti / street-art coffee shack park was there because it was the one time that it appeared as though this area was going to embrace street artists. It was all a ruse though and now the people are back to putting terrible tags all over the city again. I hate vandalism, but I love street art. The thing is though, how can an aspiring artist possibly get better if they are not allowed to paint anywhere? It's a strange thing. The people that were doing the work there were not hurting anyone, and the only things they were painting on were temporary structures or the wall the separates the properties. The coffee shack guy also periodically painted over spots so that new artists could have a try. I am sure if the owner of the land simply talked to the guy, that they could have worked something out.
Now instead of being a fun place to go have a coffee this plot of land is just a place for people to come and dump their trash. It's upsetting to me.