Stacy Conradt
The Quick 10: 10 Famous Pieces of Graffiti
by Stacy Conradt - July 20, 2010 - 3:30 PM

q10

Graffiti has come a long way over the years. Largely thanks to artists like Banksy and Blek le Rat, some graffiti is now recognized as the clever art form it really is. In fact, some Banksy pieces have even been taken from their original locations and installed in museums like the Tate Modern. Check out these 10 messages that have scribbled their way into pop culture.

1. You know “Surrender Dorothy” as the skywritten message in The Wizard of Oz, of course, but it has also become a famous piece of graffiti in the D.C. area. Someone with a sharp eye and a good sense of humor thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kensington, Maryland, looked quite like something out of Oz. To make sure everyone else noticed the resemblance as well, an anonymous artist scrawled “Surrender Dorothy” on a railroad bridge approaching the building. It first appeared in 1973 and the original is long gone, but homages pop up every now and then.

2. “Kilroy was here” is arguably the most famous piece of graffiti ever. It’s certainly made the rounds, that’s for sure. There are several stories as to how the little doodle originated, so your guess is probably as good as anyone else’s. Many claim the little guy was a WWII tag, but at least one documentary shows a “Kilroy was here” tag from Fort Knox dated 1937. He’s often used to poke fun at dictators, whether the stories are true or not: Hitler allegedly was concerned that Kilroy was a super-spy of some sort; Stalin supposedly asked who this Kilroy person was after seeing his name in a VIP bathroom. Hmm. Kilroy may have been real – the New York Times once said they found him and his name was actually J.J Kilroy. The Lowell Sun claimed his named was Frances J. Kilroy, Jr. The Oxford English Dictionary simply calls him a mythical person.

3. “Foo was here” is the Australian answer to Kilroy was here. Or rather, Kilroy was the answer to Foo. Most sources show that Foo predated Kilroy by at least 20 years. Foo’s origins are also unknown, but one story is that Foo was a guy who had the fun job of inspecting welds of submarines during WWI. To show his bosses that he was, in fact, getting his work done, Foo left a little signature everywhere he went. Interestingly enough, this is the exact story the Times reported when they said they found James J. Kilroy.

4. In the last of the “Kilroy” genre we have Mr. Chad, the British version. Mr. Chad was usually accompanied by a clever saying that always started with “Wot, no…” For example, in response to the WWII rationing, Mr. Chad often inquired, “Wot, no sugar?” He was spied on the walls of Parliament after the 1945 election, gloating, “Wot, no Tories?” And in 1946, Chad was marked on trains going through Austria with a gleeful, “Wot, no Fuehrer?”

5. “Clapton is God” was famous graffiti all over London in the ’60s. Even more famous is the picture taken of a Clapton graffito at just the right (or wrong) time…

6. Here’s one for you LOTR fans. “Frodo Lives” was a popular phrase during the ’60s and ’70s and wouldn’t have been out of place on a button at Woodstock or scrawled on a wall in San Francisco. It was revived a bit when the movies came out, but it was not the craze it was back in the day. But never fear – if you want to get in on it, you still can. There’s a Facebook group for Frodo Lives!

7. You can probably guess the time period of the famous graffito “Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You.” The clever slang saw a small resurgence (with a slight tweak) during the Bush/Cheney administration.

8. “Repent Sinner.” You know, in case you needed to be reminded. “Repent sinner” has been gracing walls, buses and billboards everywhere in Western Canada, specifically Edmonton, for about 20 years now. The trend has apparently migrated to Vancouver as well. Not everyone takes the graffiti artist as seriously as she takes herself though (it’s speculated that the artist is a woman) – variations including “Reheat Dinner,” “Resume Sinning,” and “Recent Sinner” have all cropped up in the form of graffiti, stickers and even T-Shirts.

9. “Eternity” is a simple and beloved graffito tag hailing from Australia. I know, a beloved piece of graffiti? But it’s true. The poignant word was written in chalk all over the streets of Sydney from the ’40s through the ’60s. The man responsible for it, a former criminal, remained anonymous for many years. His identity was revealed just a few years before he died in 1967. But his death didn’t mean the death of the “Eternity” campaign – others picked up the slogan, including the city of Sydney, which illuminated the word on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the 2000 New Year’s Eve celebrations. They did it again during the 2000 Olympics. And there’s an aluminum piece of artwork at Town Hall Square in Sydney that commemorates the movement.


10. And then there’s Banksy, the anonymous British graffiti artist. He is quite prolific, so it’s hard to choose just one of his pieces. I’m rather fond of the Pulp Fiction guys, myself. There are plenty more to choose from if Travolta isn’t quite up your alley.

Are there any famous graffiti pieces where you live?

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Comments (52)

  1. The “Surrender Dorothy” was so classic. You’d be coming around the Beltway and see that spire in the distance, then lose sight of it as you took a curve. Then it came back into sight as you took another turn and at the same time there were those huge letters – “Surrender Dorothy”. People would use it as a landmark when giving directions.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 7-20-2010 at 3:44 pm

  2. Back in my hometown, there was a wall bearing the inscription “Agnes Moorhead is God.” My brother and future sister-in-law had their picture taken on the site. Later they named their daughter Samantha. Coincidence?

    posted by loripop on 7-20-2010 at 3:58 pm

  3. There was a huge Peace symbol painted on the roof of a building at my college. It was a building low on a hill, so you could see the sign easily from upper campus and it was a bit of a legend around campus. One night some crazy local man climbed up and painted over it to cover it up while preaching some kind of crazy talk. A few nights later, a covert group of students set out to redo the symbol, where it still is. It’s been there at least 40 years (minus about 3 days).

    posted by MeaghanD on 7-20-2010 at 4:13 pm

  4. I seem to recall a graffiti movement using small stickers that said “You Are Beautiful”. The idea was that you wrote in to a website and they would send you stickers that you could put up in public places to remind people they were beautiful.

    I tried Googling it but am unable to load the site (apparently it’s not allowed here at work), so I’m not sure if they’re still sending stickers out. I always thought it was a cute idea.

    posted by Jenny on 7-20-2010 at 4:18 pm

  5. There was a Val Kilmer grafitti thing going on in Toronto a few years ago, complete with his picture in some instances. It was especially popular in the western part of the city.

    posted by mlb on 7-20-2010 at 4:19 pm

  6. In NYC it was the “Crack is Wack” by Keith Haring. I’m surprised that is not on your list. Maybe because it was labeled as a mural. A pic can be found on this link: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/harings-crack-is-wack-mural-is-being-restored/

    posted by Jess on 7-20-2010 at 4:36 pm

  7. In my hometown, you see train cars with a martini glass painted on it along with
    “The Rambler” written below. Legend has it that the man that wrote on those cars was in charge of inpecting the cars in the railyard in Houston. The Rambler was his mark.

    posted by JOHN THE THIRD on 7-20-2010 at 4:38 pm

  8. What about the big “Hi, How Are You” Frog thing in Austin, Tx?

    posted by Heather on 7-20-2010 at 4:42 pm

  9. Hi, How Are You by Daniel Johnson is very famous here in Austin, TX!

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_D_iEOTIGzv4/SOyzpA7XXpI/AAAAAAAAC9w/798XuvnwFVU/s1600-h/20081005DanielJohnsonHiHowAreYouDragGraffiti.jpg

    posted by Katelyn Patterson on 7-20-2010 at 4:46 pm

  10. In Boston, there was a “Reverse Curve” sign that, thanks to a clever artist, became “Reverse the Curse”. It was a legend to those driving on Storrow Drive. When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, there was a small ceremony with Mayor Thomas Menino and then-governor Mitt Romney taking the sign down.

    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/150897587_5e12934a65.jpg

    posted by JRD on 7-20-2010 at 4:46 pm

  11. Here in the Twin Cities we had a run of stylized Andre the Giant images with “OBEY” written beneath. They’d show up on light posts and street signs all around the core central Minneapolis and St. Paul areas.

    posted by alan on 7-20-2010 at 4:47 pm

  12. @jenny – You Are Beautiful are indeed still sending stickers out. I used to love spotting them when I lived in Chicago. They do some larger scale works every now and again too:
    http://you-are-beautiful.com/NEWS.htm

    The only regionally famous piece of graffiti that comes to mind for me is the big ‘CROW APTOK’ piece on the Oxford-London road. Wasn’t there last time I was back…
    http://www.crowaptok.com/faq.html

    Seems like it was mentioned in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

    posted by Markle on 7-20-2010 at 4:55 pm

  13. This one isn’t famous (sorry about that), but it’s my favorite graffito I’ve every seen. It was in Germany and said, “F— yourself out!” Ha ha ha! Let that be a lesson to you: don’t create graffiti in your second language.

    posted by Rachel on 7-20-2010 at 5:11 pm

  14. The “Hi, How Are You” frog is not graffiti, but a mural Daniel Johnston created for the former tenant, a record store called Sound Exchange. When they went out of business and a burrito chain moved in, they wanted to paint over it but were persuaded otherwise by concerned citizens. When I think of Austin graffiti, I think of the recent “yarn bomb,” where a local artist covered the signs on N. Lamar with knitted graffiti – http://www.statesman.com/life/meet-austins-yarn-bomber-587450.html

    posted by Mike on 7-20-2010 at 5:17 pm

  15. There’s a militant anti-graffiti guy named Fred Radtke who has made it his mission in life to paint flat gray paint over every piece of graffiti he sees in New Orleans, which always looks worse than the original tag.
    Banksy actually came to town to challenge Radtke, who also calls himself the Gray Ghost and sometimes arranges for a photographer to photograph him painting over graffiti wearing super hero costumes.
    http://animalnewyork.com/2008/09/banksy-targets-the-gray-ghost-in-new-orleans/

    posted by Steve on 7-20-2010 at 5:30 pm

  16. How about doing a post on ‘famous graffiti locations’? Start by searching for ‘The Rock’ in Flint, Michigan.

    posted by Dave on 7-20-2010 at 6:07 pm

  17. No mention of the Anarchy A? The letter A in a circle.
    .

    posted by Scotty on 7-20-2010 at 6:41 pm

  18. Here’s a photo of some very scathing graffiti about the Irish economy I saw in Dublin near Temple Bar.
    It’s an obvious reference to Warhol’s famous Soup Cans.

    http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7476/68549858.png

    posted by GH on 7-20-2010 at 6:41 pm

  19. The best piece of graffiti I ever saw was in August of 1972. While it is NSFW, it is funny. Scrawled on a bathroom wall was this ditty:

    Don’t change dicks in the middle of a screw.
    Vote for Nixon in ’72!

    posted by Melissa on 7-20-2010 at 7:18 pm

  20. The National Museum of Australia has developed a permanent gallery based on the ideas behind the ‘Eternity’ graffiti. They seem to believe that the story of ‘Eternity’ represents something inherently Australian.

    http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/now_showing/eternity/

    The gallery itseslf is actually a bit of a failure because of the issues they have had with the odd shape of the space, poor lighting and the sound spill from all of the A/V they packed in. It’s such a pity because of the wonderful stories that are told in the Gallery.

    posted by Evelyn on 7-20-2010 at 7:29 pm

  21. It isn’t famous, but in my town there were a bunch of places that had “Santa is Real” stenciled onto the sidewalk. Seeing them always made me smile. :)

    posted by Lily on 7-20-2010 at 7:54 pm

  22. Someone used to put a “Hon!” sign under the official “Welcome to Baltimore” sign heading into Baltimore, MD. I love Balmer! Link to info on the Baltimore dialect (Baltimorese) in my name.

    posted by Ann on 7-20-2010 at 8:07 pm

  23. Back in the late 70′s there was a local news report about how every single pay phone (except two, which the phone company was keeping their location secret) in Manhattan had the words “Worship God” scratched into the phone. For years after that, I always made a point for checking for it whenever I used a pay phone, and I always found it.

    posted by Alex G. on 7-20-2010 at 8:40 pm

  24. “FREE JOMO KENYATTA”. Read “Fish Whistle” by Daniel Pinkwater for the true story of how this piece of graffiti almost led to an Ambassadorship for a homeless veteran in the ’60′s.

    posted by harold on 7-20-2010 at 9:40 pm

  25. The best grafitti I’ve ever seen, which has gotten a little famous in my neighbourhood, is “Beer + Cheese = Unity”… so true!

    posted by longtones on 7-20-2010 at 9:42 pm

  26. Not famous but funny. Someone had written, “Jesus Saves” on a bathroom wall. Underneath that someone else wrote, “But Gretzky scores on the return!”

    posted by SeanP on 7-20-2010 at 9:51 pm

  27. It is well documented Where Kilroy Was Here started. See the true legends at:
    http://www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroyLegends.html

    Sadly the Sighting at Ft. Knox isn’t true. It was on the History channel but it was staged for the show. See:
    http://www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroySightings-4.html#Knox

    Thanks for helping keep the memories alive!

    By the way, Foo and Chad are also documented. Just either name in the site search at the bottom of most pages.

    Pat

    posted by Patrick Tillery on 7-20-2010 at 9:59 pm

  28. My all time favorite… On a condom machine in an East Texas gas station men’s room, back around 1970: “Don’t buy this gum, it tastes like rubber.”

    posted by Crews on 7-20-2010 at 10:05 pm

  29. On Route 24 in Massachusetts, heading north from Brockton to Boston, you will go under an overpass that some young lothario used to express his undying love for his girl. Alas, his spray can skills were better than his spelling, and one can only imagine the rapture she felt upon reading “I LOVE YOU SWEATHEART,” and knowing it was always, always going to be there.

    posted by Geoff Casavant on 7-20-2010 at 10:53 pm

  30. “Cool Disco Dan” all over DC in the ’80s and ’90s. That and “FFC”.

    posted by Neisha on 7-20-2010 at 11:44 pm

  31. Last summer, I spent the summer at Cornell in Ithaca, NY. In drives around the countryside, we would often pass under a train bridge with ‘FH Fox is 86′ or someother number, I don’t remember. After some investigating, I found out he had been a professor at the vet school there, which was cool because that’s why I was at Cornell that summer anyway. Here’s some links with photos.
    http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=784270800

    http://livingindryden.org/2004/04/fh_fox_was_born_in_23.html

    posted by Leslie on 7-21-2010 at 12:35 am

  32. My boyfriend lives in Baltimore, and he’s always obsessing over the “hon” and other Baltimoron talk. I don’t get it. Every other city and town in the country has people who call you “hon”… often waitresses… but Baltimore seems to think they invented the word? Back home in California, you couldn’t go a day without hearing it expressed to a complete stranger at least twice, so why is Baltimore special?

    posted by Pepper on 7-21-2010 at 2:09 am

  33. My dad lives in Belfast, he sees “support nude sunbathing” on a wall, next time he passes it has “hasn’t Ireland suffered enough?” under it

    posted by LittleRhedd on 7-21-2010 at 2:28 am

  34. @alan

    The ‘Obey’ images are by Shepard Fairey. He’s well known in graffiti and was the artist behind the ‘Hope’ images of Obama.

    Incidentally, he ripped off the image from a Reuters photographer and then tried to con his way out of paying for it by creating dozens of fake mock-ups to ‘prove’ he came up with the image independently. When it was found out, he admitted the ploy and finally admitted plagiarism.

    posted by Tom on 7-21-2010 at 4:28 am

  35. “In case of fire do not use elevator” in my school usually has “use water” following it.

    posted by Erin on 7-21-2010 at 9:48 am

  36. Here in Winnipeg, Canada we had someone going around for a few years recently with various stencils graffiting sidewalks and such. Two of the more memorable ones were a silhouette of Burton Cummings (of the Guess Who, a Winnipeg native) with “Stand Tall” written underneath; and the very popular “Keep it Riel” or “Keepin’ it Riel” with a picture of Louis Riel, the father of Manitoba. The latter has been turned into a t-shirt which is even more popular now.

    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2394/2178413759_6c95b6e282.jpg

    posted by Bert on 7-21-2010 at 9:55 am

  37. In my hometown of Fayetteville, TN, the graduating class of 1967 went on a tear the week before graduation and sprayed “Sr.s `67″ on any surface they could find. They were threatened with non-graduation but were allowed to after they cleaned up most of their mess. However, there are still some remnanats of their handywork scattered throughout the city.

    posted by Zane on 7-21-2010 at 10:15 am

  38. The Surrender Dorthory grafitti was used on the cover of “Surrender Dorothy”‘s debut album.

    posted by Martin on 7-21-2010 at 11:23 am

  39. At FE Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, there is a big sign at the entry gate that says “Peace is our profession” underwhich someone wrote “War is just a hobby.”

    posted by Darlene on 7-21-2010 at 11:44 am

  40. I have a photograph of long-ago and far-away graffiti that makes me smile -

    Under a sign that read ‘Bill Stickers will be Prosecuted’, someone one wrote ‘Bill Stickers is innocent!’

    posted by Elly Vortex on 7-21-2010 at 12:08 pm

  41. No mention of the John Lennon Peace Wall in Prague?

    posted by Jenny on 7-21-2010 at 12:44 pm

  42. In the metro Milwaukee area “Voldemort” has been tagged underneath Stop on many many stop signs. The Harry Potter geek in me loves the Stop Voldemort reference.

    Also in Milwaukee, someone tagged Welcome to Cleveland on the roof of their house so that when people flying into Mitchell Airport saw it, they’d think they went to the wrong place! :)

    posted by nancy pants on 7-21-2010 at 1:55 pm

  43. In 2002 I was in Mumbai – everywhere you went, on underpasses and traffic dividers someone scrawled “Beanbags” in spray paint along with a phone #, presumably to call if you wanted one. In 2007 and 2008 I went back and sure enough, “Beanbags” was alive and well.

    posted by Mr. Retro on 7-21-2010 at 2:17 pm

  44. When the elevator at Georgia Southern’s art department was not working, a sign would appeared reading “This Elevator is Baroque.”

    posted by Phrank Loyed on 7-21-2010 at 3:35 pm

  45. Not famous, but my favorite grafitti of all time was a tag on a bridge near the town I grew up in that said “I Hate Potato Salad.” Alas, it’s gone now.

    posted by Kate on 7-21-2010 at 4:30 pm

  46. I must live near John The Third, there are two sets of tracks in my town and we see the Rambler with the martini glass on at least 95% of the trains.

    posted by Larissa on 7-22-2010 at 1:28 pm

  47. The oldest and most famous graffiti by far is “Squatter Man”. It has been scratched on rocks all over the world for thousands of years. Recently it was used as evidence in a new astronomical theory:
    http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/arch07/070709squatterman.htm

    posted by Vern Wall on 7-25-2010 at 6:15 pm

  48. I’ve seen an elevator whose warning sign was followed by “use CO2″.

    Visible from Erie Boulevard in Schenectady, NY, on a cement retaining wall, there was for many years a graffito that said “Susan is a pinhead.” When it was painted out, after many years, it was soon replaced with “Susan is still a pinhead.” Later, after another removal, that was replaced with “Susan remains to be a pinhead” (which makes one question the head shape of that tagger). It was so well known in the area that someone eventually opened a restaurant/pub called “Pinhead Susan’s”.

    posted by Worldwalker on 7-25-2010 at 11:46 pm

  49. I’m from Edmonton, and I haven’t seen the “Repent Sinner” graffiti in a long time. The most common one that my friends and I always seek out these days are the sets of graffiti that say “Listen” and usually feature a bird of some sort. We’ve found them all over town and whenever they get painted over, they usually turn up somewhere else soon after.

    posted by nonspecific on 8-9-2010 at 4:03 pm

  50. The Rambler, the champagne glass complete w/bubbles was always my favorite. I remember the looking for the mark on trains in the 90′s. I haven’t seen it in years. I still look on the occasions I end up stopped by a train.

    posted by Leddy on 11-3-2010 at 8:31 pm

  51. A few years ago in Edmonton, Alberta there was often a phrase scrawled next to the usual “tagger” graffiti, usually with an arrow to that graffiti, and in black felt marker handwriting that read “VANDAL COP” or something of the sort. Variations i saw were things like “FIRST NATIONS VANDAL COP”, “EPS VANDAL COP” , “VANDAL POLICE”, “VANDAL SQUAD” “VANDAL SQUAD VANDAL” , “VANDAL SQUAD GOD”… I’ve Googled this and nothing! Anyone else with any info? I havent seen it since, about 2008 at the latest?

    posted by Mike F on 12-8-2010 at 11:51 pm

  52. I saw the crossed out tags with “cops” written in black felt, handwritte, recentley on Jasper avenue in edmonton. It just said cops.

    posted by Brian Knudsen on 5-26-2011 at 6:13 pm

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