Taggers

      There has been low-level tagging in Indianapolis for decades now.  Some neighborhoods have quite a bit, and some of that has long been gang-related.  Other tagging is more artistic -- the White River bridge north of Broad Ripple has colorful layers of mostly art and declarations of teenage love. 

      Some tagging is individualistic; some time back, for a year or so, the public and police were mystified by a series of well-executed, colorful "STS" tags around downtown.  Was it a new gang?  Did they have an art department?  The tagger started to add "Stealin' Them Spots" to his tags, which grew steadily larger, fancier and were in less-accessible spots.  He was eventually arrested, just one young man, and I'm not sure what became of him.  Being sentenced to four years in graphic design school probably would have been a good start.

      Broad Ripple has had a series of scrawled, simple tags show up over the last year or so.  Most of them are ugly, hasty work but the names are intriguing, not at all the usual set of initials or glyph.

      First we had "LOAM."  A bit dirty but well-grounded, one supposes.  A fertile field for growth.  LOAM eventually washed away.

      Next followed "BeRZeRKeR," who by the Law of Narrative Inevitability is mostly likely a scrawny, underweight twelve-year-old, possibly female.  The time to go a-viking apparently passed as schools re-opened and the weather turned colder.

      But the latest is perhaps the funniest: "TEEF."  This tagger can only be the human version of the dog famous in memes as "Phteven."  The dog's real name is Tuna.  The tagger?  We can only hope orthodontia will help with the urge to spray, and wait for the next clown with a can of paint and too much unsupervised time.