You Would

Perhaps I’m more attuned to graffiti as an art form since being introduced to the Wooster Collective, but I think it's otherwise noteworthy that this past weekend I twice spotted the ‘You Would’ graffiti tag first at Vol de Nuit in the West Village and then on the side of a building in Soho. The tag also popped up at Café Select at the end of March. 'You Would' first appeared in preponderance in Brooklyn last year, purportedly ‘baffling’ Park Slopers unfamiliar with the nuances of the phrase’s many uses. I’m not one to condone damage to public or someone else’s property in any form, but I have to admit that I like the tag on a few levels. It makes me nostalgic for a middle school culture that I do not miss whatsoever, simultaneously reminding me that some people never grow up, and in the words of the alleged tagger himself (who supposedly wrote in to animalnewyork.com in March of this year), it has a ‘meta self-consciousness built into it.’ It makes me think, it makes me smile, and it has a wink to it; definitely my kind of street art.