Prague Urban Text

Let's Get Together and Fuck the Spelling

2010-03-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

So, Legerova, the nastiest downtown street you can only imagine. Wide, noisy, very pedestrian-unfriendly, unlike most other streets in the city. It smashes into the city center straight from the lovely Nuselsky bridge, the great place for both pretty views and successful suicide attempts. Then it runs past some serious-looking buildings in the New Town, winds around the main train station, and gets dispersed somewhere around Holesovice and Mala Strana. In the New Town, hotels, hostels and pensions press themselves against the walls, scared by the never-ending traffic. I believe this was sprayed onto the transparent wall of a telephone booth by someone who lived in one of these places. Can't imagine a Praguer writing something so multicultural, so defenselessly uniting. But the two spelling mistakes suggest it still could have been a non-Native speaker. And anyway, the phone booth in this city are mostly used for heroin injections by gypsies, especially around the main train station. Every booth you pass looks like a tiny Lynchean stage with skulls and weird smiles dancing in the dark. I enjoyed staring at the traffic current through that window with these vibrant words painted onto it. Why I even was in that street? I was going to my preferred legal assistance company, a bunch of nifty Russians who know their way around local red tape. It's such offices of such companies where people in Prague really get together, I thought.

Tourists Love Prague and it Loves them Back

2010-02-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

I saw this beautiful, sincere, screaming inscription on the wall somewhere between The Globe and the main pieces of tourist flypaper in the Old Town. Now what's not to love here! I lovingly picture a middle-aged man, probably not a native English speaker, but with an attitude, splashing a random wall with his rant about the city he visited. His restaurant bills and overpriced beer was thrown at him, the taxi meter seemed to race faster than the cab's engine, and a galaxy of other torrid tourist experiences landed upon his head. And there he is, pulling out a felt pen and putting it all in a few simple words which pretty much sum up the stories of many a foreign traveler. Though, mister, if you think that a mild touristy fuck-over in a post-Soviet Slavic state equals to being in the hands of mafia, you haven't been in Soviet Union proper. You would beg to pay 5 Euros for a beer-water cocktail served with a trademark Czech sneer once you realize these young men with pipes in their hands are not exactly plumbers on their late hour round through the city outskirts.

Still, this should be definitely put on flyers in hotels. I am also forwarding a link to this image to the ministry of tourism. Hope they heed!

Oh My God, an Update! Mala Strana Confession.

2009-09-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, my dear nonexistent readers. Let's just pretend we had a summer break. I hope your summer did not suck hard as mine, you are not on antidepressants, and there's nobody you refer to as 'my shrink.' Anyway, things keep flowing, and though Prague is not especially generous in rewarding me with new inscriptions, there are some I feel the need to share.

This is quite a lengthy one, is it not? I found it in Mala Strana, on a wall between the Kampa park and the Legii bridge. This decadent message fits very well in the district, known both as a smaller, prettier, artsier, more enjoyable version of Prague's Old Town and a foul place where extravagant porn producers and drug dealers conduct their corrupting activities. In fact, I personally know some people who could write this if they had a passion for wall writing and obviously a car, because the text mentions one. Myself, I am not unfamiliar with this very Prague, almost Kafkian surge of sin which drags you into seedy places where drugs are made, sold and consumed, where people go with the flow and the flow has a distinctive sewer origin. Some are lucky enough to refer to it as 'going out,' while others serve a full-time sentence of cocaine trade, random sex, feeble creative attempts and quasi-bohemian lifestyle which is bad for both your nose and liver. There's a side of Prague's expat community (not many locals there, probably bound by obligations like work and family) which definitely has this piece written all over it. Which makes it a great honest piece, a ringing bell for those who understand and who know what playing with these little demons feels like.

Let's just turn it into something positive. While it hardly makes any sense to be sickened by your own past, this is an impulse which can put you afloat and draw a line between you and the easy options. Start attending cooking classes. Get a haircut. Buy a suit. Draw this motherfucking picture you have already told everybody about. Stop feeling pity for your fallen self. Put your past in a box where it gives you experience and perspective, not insomnia and kidney failure.

Cry of Consumer Distress

2009-03-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

The Zizkov TV tower is a seminal part of Prague's Zizkov, the once working class district where now colorful gypsies, unambitious expat artists, hard-working drug dealers and not so extravagant drinkers abound. This is the regions's nightlife axis, the absurdity shrine which personifies the local mellow, beer-powered insanity which soaks many a manifestation of local living and sends waves of calm, home-bred craziness all around. Look at the babies which cover this spaceship-like construction, savor the combination. Imagine planting an iPhone into an ant hill inhabited with heavily sedated ants. They don't remove the alien object, they decorate it. This is what it's all about.

This is also the area's main crea-disiac, the object which inspires many intoxicated individuals to deposit the offsprings of their creative impulses onto the neighboring surfaces. In other words, there are quite a few interesting cultural finds around this uncanny beacon. Here's one of them, which has already acquired a bit of Flickr fame and blog buzz.

So, low cost airlines don't fly where this person wants. My fingers are itching to link this to the recession. This is how spoiled we are, and this is how we deserve the crunch. Just go back in time and tell a 20-something person in Middle Age Europe that big steel birds want too much gold to take us to the fairy tale locations we desire, and those who agree to take copper, are too intractable when it comes to route planning. Probably not too much of a problem for someone who is lucky to be alive and breathing, compared to people his age, taken away by epidemic or the flail of some stinking knight.

That's so human. Give them something, and tomorrow they will say you gave not enough. Does this kidult attitude really suit the times? Are people frustrated that low cost airlines can't take them to a place with cheaper booze, bigger tits and spicier chili? Or are they happy to have a job and a place to sleep? Mind you, millions of people don't even know what the fuck a low cost airline is. Can I finish this post and not use the H word - not Hitler, but hipster? You know, dude, chances are low cost airlines won't fly where you want for the next decade. You might be happy to have low cost airlines at all.

I wonder whether there are downshifters now. Whether people give up their jobs for a living of consuming less when everybody is consuming less just because there is less opporunity to consume.

Anyway, this is a nice looking piece of stencil art, with a reasonably nervous font, and some non-text decorations which enhance the overall picture. The message obviously makes sense, and this sense even seems to change with time. Isn't that a sign of worthiness, after all.

Finally, the first post here; One tasty bit of content.

2009-01-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

The idea for this blog came to me during the spring/summer of 2008 while I was roaming the streets of Prague, which is where I live, mostly from or to various parties, cafes or eateries. This freelance living really tells on our socialization options making us go out only when...

Sorry, where was I? This cream-fried chicken with gnocchi gets me so distracted. Anyway, thing is that I'm a hopeless text addict reading stuff (and bitching about written stuff I don't like) whenever I can. I have been reading during my meals for all my literate life, and only the presence of a beautiful lady, just like now, can distract me from devouring the lines with my hungry eyes. I read ads in the street, I read air refreshener labels in restrooms, I complain about badly used text (something which I think I should dedicate a separate blog to), and I get attracted to anything written in letters which I know immediately. I can already hear the voices yelling at me, urging me to get to the main point, for fuck's sake. Right.

Prague being quite an expat-filled city with quite a bit of English language powered life going on, there's something going on even on the walls of the buildings. I realized I sometimes notice inscriptions in English which actually mean something and are not 'graffiti tags' of some underage rap gang. I really liked some of them and started taking pictures with my mobile every time I saw anything of at least some interest. So, dear boys and girls, this is what this blog is about. It's about bits of text, sometimes short, sometimes longer, which I found written somewhere in the sity and which meant something to me. I am going to post the pictures and try to put some mental garbage in your skull by telling what I think is the point of this or that piece. Don't expect this blog to be too useful, exciting, or rich in quality content. This is not NYC, all right. It's rare that you find an English language phrase which is worth writing about (I'm not counting the countless fucks and dicks one can easily find). I hope I will not run out of stuff before the warm season kicks in when I expect to spend more time walking, hopefully taking more pictures.

Here's our beauty for today.

I do like the nervous font and the way the blue paint unevenly covers the texture of the wall. I don't quite remember where exactly I saw this. Must be somewhere around the glorious and fucked up construction called the Zizkov TV tower. Though the text expresses a known truth, because like anything on this planet, heavy metal has obvious divine origin (except for post-Load Metallica, mind you), it still gives us something to think about. The controversy of the creator concept and the atheist views, the weakness of man's perception and the eternal quest for the ultimate answer which is our existence, along with a generous load of other bullshit come to mind when we look at this. Putting it in a more brief, less disturbing way, it is beautiful.

I can't promise my further stuff will be as beautiful, and I can't know when my next post will be published, but writing into this blogger void feels cool, so hey there, if I don't die by the blogger sword, I will do my best to add more stuff. Take care, and maybe let me know what you think.