These Are the Armies of the Night?

Last Wednesday Barb, Elizabeth, and I took a stroll through the ole neighborhood. After hitting Mocha Monkey and Creston Park we decided to walk down one of the many alleys that run behind the backs of the houses, dividing the blocks. Southeast Portland alleys are awesome, and deserve a book or documentary, or at least a blog post, all their own. The ones closest to our house are often like country roads -- two dirt wheelruts overhung with tree branches.

Anyhow, we came across this graffito, which annoyed me. I snapped the picture with the intention of really laying into the kids (clearly kids -- or even just kid -- don't you think?) who painted this pathetic tag. There's no art to it. The name is a lame cliche. It's hidden in an alley. Oh yeah, I was going to use this blog to rip those so-called 'Rebels' a new one.

I started to rant about these thoughts to Barb and she said she found it (the tag, not the rant) endearing. "It's like something I would have done when I was a kid," she added. Something stupid but harmless, rebellious yet not really. Of course she was right. Kids do this kind of stuff and as long as it remains fairly harmless (e.g. tagging a garage door that opens into an alley) rather than horrifying (e.g. setting fire to an orphanage) we should accept it for what it is: an outward manifestation of the painful growth of adolescence.