Graffiti

Last weekend when my dad was here we opened the door of my apartment to find that the hallway had been tagged. Black writing all up and down the walls.

To give you a better understanding the apartment I live in has a main door and when you walk through the main door you are in the foyer for the four apartments. There is a door to your right and left for the two downstairs apartments and in front of you are the stairs that lead to the two other apartments. So last weekend when the graffiti appeared it was all over the walls on the stairs. It looked as though someone had taken a sharpie and just had at it.

After getting over my initial shock the whole incident left me really curious. First of all, who walks into an apartment and climbs up the stairs to tag the walls? And secondly what does "Somos los jomis" mean? I am assuming that jomi is Spanish bastardization of the English word homey considering the rest of the graffiti said things like "del barrio okey" (the ghetto, okay). Seriously, who does this?


So now, imagine my surprise this morning when I returned home to find that not only has the original graffiti not been painted over but it now contains even more graffiti. This time in red. Most of the words are the same as what was there before but it also included some new words. The strange part is that the new graffiti looked like it was written by a younger hand and looked as though it was copying what was originally written on the wall. Makes me wonder about my sometimes loud, always obnoxious neighbors upstairs.

All this graffiti comes a couple weeks after some destruction of property in my neighborhood. Apparently 40 cars got their back windows smashed out in one night, I only saw 8 on my street and luckily it was a night I wasn't parked in my neighborhood. All this activity makes me wonder if maybe it's time to start thinking about a new neighborhood to live in.