"We call it Lelijkestad", she grinned at her attempt at making a silly joke about her own city. Her fillers almost bursting through her lips as the ends struggled to reach the top of her botox cheeks.
Lelijk means ugly and Stad means city. The ugly city, apparently.
This is what the majority of the Dutch social-media has nicknamed the city. Lelystad is, however, not ugly. It is simply a little flavourless. Most of the city is inhabited by the working class and the city is not impervious to the inflation, housing crisis, and rising cost of living.
Lelystad is not too far away from my city. It takes me the same time to go to Amsterdam Centraal as much it does to the Lelystad train station.
I was in the city for a short meeting. It was just a tad bit longer than expected, long enough to make me stay in the city to go around the train station as I had time to spare till the next train arrived.
I stumbled across a narrow street that had something unique calling me out from the far end - murals!
This mural was my favourite from the collection. It was beautiful, symmetrical, and had an immediate as well as vague meaning to it.
I see a beautiful woman, with the latest red, heart-shaped, tiny sunglasses. Majestic hair, and a bucket hat on top. She is cool and confident. Her style is inspired by street fashion and hiphop. But the expression is camouflaged a lot with the fakeness of social media.
Her beauty and self-expression is disfigured with filters. Oh filters, so many to choose from. I know they are filters because of the design they have on the mural, similar to filters on photo editing apps. There are "fill colors" on the bottom to choose from. And most importantly it all floats on a sea of emojis. Or are those emojis a synonym of the drug of validation from social media?
Next to it was my second favourite. Ironically, there is a cctv device attached to the top of the light beam on the opposite side.
Always being watched.
Man in suit, who supposedly has junped out of somewhere. His expression locked in with both the joy of freedom and the fear of the abyss underneath. Another man, in shirt and tie, peering out through the cctv camera.
Is he just watching? Or has he also been on the edge and deliberating to leave?
On the other side of the wall is this mural. It is absolutely beautiful. Such a shame there are piles of bricks obstructing it. It is far different from all the other styles in this collection.
The vibrant colors and flowy design appealed to me very well. I love how much room to breathe it has yet looks saturated.
I wonder what inspired this piece. It is still hard for me to decide.
Street art came full circle when I made my way to the back of this place to explore more of it.
The walls were filled with graffiti, good, well-made, nicely designed grafitti.
Tagging in throw up style graffiti is the most obvious here. But it also mergers into the limits of blockbuster style. Even if devoid of a certain meaning, graffiti of this style takes lots of practice and time. The comical character had a funny expression, almost as if to say "is this what we're doing, now?".
Lelystad is not bad at all. There are certain places with a lot of value in this city that is widely regarded as an ugly city. I think it is not fair to call it so. Yes, there isn't much going on in jere compared to the larger Randstad area with cities like Rotterdam or Amsterdam, but it is still pretty cool the way it already is.
The murals are not far from the Lelystad train station. If you ever visit the city, go and take a look at these. I'm also going to add the first picture to the CCC's Street Art Contest #167. A lot of amazing street art can be found through the contest.
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