Graffiti used to be a simple affair. Political graffiti in Greek and football graffiti mainly in the Latin alphabet. For instance, ‘IRA’ did not signify support for Irish Republicans – it was short for Iraklis, a transliteration of the Ηρα of Ηρακλής (Hercules), Thessaloniki’s third football team. There was plenty of it, and practically every wall in the town centre was defaced. The political graffiti had remarkably good spelling, which led me to the conclusion that the parties provided the sprayers with a written script and the cans of spray paint. In any case, it was comprehensible.
Things are different now. The political and football sprayers continue to deface walls, but in recent years a new category of sprayer has signed up for the fun. These people don’t limit themselves to walls. Windows, doors, shutters and even road signs are sprayed with things I cannot fathom. The scrawls also seem to be a form of self-expression. Some look like signatures or ciphers. On asking if there was a word for them, I was told ‘tag’, which has gone into Greek as ταγκ.
At the height of the economic crisis, the main streets were a distressing site with many ‘To Let’ and ‘We’re Moving’ signs on closed premises. Things have picked up again, but many small businesses went under. The effects can be seen in the side streets where there are still many vacant shops, small businesses with premises of 50m2 or smaller. They are not spared the attentions of sprayers as the pictures illustrate.
As you can see, no space is wasted. The graffiti reaches the pavement.
At last, a legible word: φλόκος – the word my mother-in-law uses for a mop.
Note the arse end of a motorbike. I usually crop them out of a pic, but I’ve noticed that in almost every photo I take in the town centre, bikes are everywhere. Even in the street names I took a few posts back, the upper parts of motorbikes were visible even though the signs were 3m off the ground.