Banksy: This'll look nice when its framed.

San Francisco's Mission art scene is complex and multi-faceted. I was at my little co-op gallery, hanging a new show of old works for the month of May (now down), and a fellow artist there pointed out this graffiti across the street. He told me it was a famous tagger and people were coming by from all over to photograph and then blog about it.

Later, I read in San Francisco Magazine: "No one has verified international tagger Banksy's real identity, but locals suspect that this particular portrait of the artist as a young man was painted by him sometime between the late hours of April 20 and the wee hours of April 21, just days after San Francisco's primiere of his street-art documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. Though Banksy has managed to avoid the official art world for years, that hasn't stopped dealers from dismanteling his walls and selling them for $400,000-plus a pop. This piece joins nearly a dozen recent works attributed to the elusive tagger, his first big "showing" here. Let's hope our street cleaners are also discerning art critics." (pg 28, June 2010)

Alas, our street cleaners turned out not the be the problem. Within a couple days, another tagger, clearly jealous of all the attention this Banksy tag was getting, augmented it: "1 Man 1 Nite 1 Bike NOLA." Totally not cool, Man. I always thought taggers were reputedly respectful of each others' work -- that a mural on a wall was less likely to be graffitied on than a blank wall. Now I'm wondering if everyone feels so marginalized, so silenced, that they take every opportunity to scream their message even at the expense of their brethren.

Art is, of course, about expressing yourself, about emotion, and the challenges of being human on earth. It isn't easy whether you're talking about art, isolation, environmental degradation or any other number of a million things that could be on your mind. I'm hungry for a day when street artists respect each other again.

Back to business as usual, the wall was completely painted over again within a few days (not shown in photos here because that would be boring). The whole "event" recorded only on our cameras, blogs and magazines. I love living in the Mission because art is part of every way life. Banksy, tag us again. 1 Man, 1 Bike guy, find your own frigging wall to tag. Everyone else, use your imagination. I can't wait to see how you feel.