Features

Public bathrooms have long been a convenient target for private moments of public expression. Before the Internet and social networking, the walls of privies were the preferred medium for anonymous rants, flames and occasional flights of poetry or philosophy. All it took was a pen or a pencil. Today, of course, the restless restroom artist is also armed with Magic Markers. 

Sometimes, in more established venues (like this wall in the bathroom of The Monkeyhouse, a legendary "secret music hall" on University Avenue) the graffiti comes in the form of layers of cut-and-paste images. 

At the other end of the artistic ladder sits the lowly porta-potty. The plastic walls of these public loos are typically splattered with obscenities and rival gang-tags but sometimes, on closer inspection, there are moments of artistic elegance to be found among the graffiti-genitalia. 

Artistry aside, the rewards of Bathroom Graffiti are sometimes found in a humorous note dashed off with a simple scrawl. In this case, most likely, by an English major. (Look closely and you will be rewarded.)