Wednesday, December 22, 2010

I think they use "bohemian" to mean "covered in graffiti"

Valparaiso. Nobody I talked to in all my travels adequately prepared me for the city. It was cool, they said, or it was dirty; it was gross, it was fun, it was hilly, it had lots of funiculars, it was dangerous, it was charming, it was run-down, it was "bohemian". What nobody told me, though, is that every inch of it is covered in street art. Most of it crazy good, and as with rising tides and boats the sheer volume of pieces made even the mediocre look pretty sweet in the middle of it all. I could have spent weeks -- months! -- there photographing every piece without getting bored. It was awesome.

Also, it's huge! I expected a town, sprawling up a couple of hillsides, navigable on foot in a day or two, which is the most anybody recommended staying there. Instead I was surprised to find myself in a pretty sizeable city that spilled up and over every hill in sight, a jumble of brightly coloured buildings piled one on top of another, jauntily scaffolding the cliffs and steep hillsides around the port and its bay. And it was dirty, and it was filled with garbage, and all sorts of structures were in an atrocious state of repair, and most of the funiculars were on strike; but I absolutely loved the place. And I never even got to La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda's houses and apparently a very cool place indeed, because I forgot to account for the Universal Museum Closing Day rule (i.e., Mondays=bad) in my planning.

I mean, just look at this stuff!

















1 comment:

  1. I love the street art. I think it looks great because it isn't a pile of tags that ugly and make no sense. It is actual thought-out artwork. Thanks for sharing - great stuff.

    I wasn't sure at first when I started reading your blog about graffitti - i'm not a fan but this stuff is fantastic.
    - Cathryn

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