The other week, I was out with Darren from Photo404, and he took me to the University Ave. underpass.
The area is littered with broken glass, so if you head in on two wheels, be sure to walk your bike in to avoid any flats. It is accessible from the riverfront trail heading under Riverside Drive just west of the NFL playground.
Sadly most of what is under there is just useless tagging, and there is very little interesting stuff to see.
The Dequindre Rail Cut in Detroit, which is undergoing a rails to trails conversion, was once home to some amazing out of the way art. Visit two galleries at Detroityes.com Here -> Gallery 1 and Here -> Gallery 2.
I wish if people were going to go to the trouble to paint down there, at least do something interesting…
This was the only piece down there that was impressive.
While I generally don’t condone graffiti, in a place like this out of the way and out of sight, it is, in my opinion not as bad.
Hopefully, some more interesting work will show up there soon…Even the stuff at the 401 Pelton underpass in 2007 was better…
“Die Young Save Yourself” ….Bawhahahahahahaahaha! Top notch!
I lived near there about 7 years ago and the cement was clean. Andrew, I’ll send you a band pick I did about 3 years ago in the same location. It has changed quite a bit.
you can see that ‘creative’ piece being created step by step here:
http://theemptyredbox.blogspot.com/2009/06/blog-post.html
glad i got to take you to a piece of the underworld. ; )
Well, now that we have video of who the offender is, shouldn’t this be forwarded to the WPD and this person be held accountable for defacing public property? (even though he had the only cool-looking graffiti?)
to me that underpass is just a place of creativity. freedom. it’s not in public view. no graffiti has ever been cleaned from there, it just keeps going over top of each other year after year. there’s more creativity going up downtown too:
http://www.denialart.com/uncategorized/art-everywhere
should we call the police? i don’t think so.
Regardless of whether or not it’s in the public view, it’s still public property and thus nobody has a right to deface it. Destroy your own property.
Knowing some people who paint in the city, the problem is that whenever they take the time to do anything good down there, some young kid will get all bent out of shape and do his ugly, new, garbage tag over it. Therefore all the people who can actually paint grow defeated and all you’re left with is disgusting garbage graffiti.
Graffiti is graffiti, and laws are laws. 8 hours of community service painting over graffiti in the city for every tag that is found per owner should be an appropriate punishment. If you want graffiti as art, then there should be an alley or wall that is dedicated for such things, with a monthly schedule for cleaning the slate. Otherwise, it is a crime, and our tax dollars go towards cleaning it up.
Art is art. And your tax dollars go towards worse things.
i used to do alot of underage drinking down here. Luc is right it wasn’t like that before…..well, i guess that was like 12 or 13 years ago, but good times none the less! the hard part was getting back up to university after!