Spacey hit the town with a mad dash, autograph rage, tagging everything in his wake. He left his name to carry on. What a handle! That’s what they used to call a nickname during the CB radio craze of the late ‘70’s. My appreciation for the name Spacey comes from liking the song “Lazy, Hazy, Spacey” by Charlie McAlister.* It’s easy to imagine Spacey, lost in a cloud, spray paint fumes buzzing, improvised blank urban surface canvas crying out for his name. Spacey should prove to remain as anonymous to the world as this blog may be to him. It seems innocuous enough, but it’s disappointing to see a neighbor have to deal with this name writing rampage.

Spacey splashed a homeowner’s wooden gate which made the crime hit closer to home. It feels like a waste of time and money for anyone who doesn’t want to display the grandeur of his name to have to clean it off their property. In the end we all pay when Spacey goes on a tear. It’s advertising for a product that doesn’t exist and no one really needs. We get the Spacey brand on top of a garbage can. On those blocky, utility boxes, the Spacey name attempts to liven up the industrial gray paint job. There’s no escape from visual clutter. I’m getting eyeball fatigue from the constant name drop.

Yet, Spacey isn’t as bothersome as the Napkn graffiti. It’s obvious that Napkin, without the letter I, is still napkin. So it’s not enough that this has to be written all over the Interstate Business Corridor and in the Kenton neighborhood in capital, white letters. While Spacey conjures whimsical visions of astronauts floating in the solar system a napkin is what you wipe your face with when you have a chicken dinner. It lacks street cred. The misspelling or weird spelling doesn’t bother me when my mind automatically fills in the missing letter. As a tag it’s not bad assed and it lacks Spacey’s cool factor.

While working up this blog post, I discovered that Haze had tagged the Interstate New Seasons and a nearby Chinese restaurant. There are times when I consider that if vandals hit a business resources are available to take care of the clean up effort and that puts my mind at ease, a bit. The mysterious color of the New Seasons, is it yellow, green or mustard?, must have proven an irresistible backdrop for Haze. I was puzzled by the change in script but impressed with an ability to carry multiple colors of spray paint. There are some flexible chops at work here with the ability to deal with encountering a white building.

It all had me daydreaming about Spacey and Haze starting an intergalactic, multiracial hip hop group. Napkn could lug around the turntable. Or better yet I don’t think you could find a better name for a marijuana dispensary than Spacey Haze. It’s time to go legit. The advertising campaign is in full gear.

 

Post Script: Since these pictures were taken two of the Napkn tags have been removed.

NAPKN tag  and chalk $ sign, added latter, have been removed from this cement wall.

See a Portland Orbit Report video based on this blog post.

*Actual name of the song is “Lazy. Spacy. Hasty. Crazy.” It’s from the Flannel Banjo release titled I’m Wounded I Don’t Think So.