There is a piece of property down the street from my house. Lots of people have probably been murdered there. It used to be a motel, but for the past 25 years it has been a fenced up pile of shit about the size of a smallish apartment building. It was once described by the LAPD as “one of the cities most dangerous properties”.
Recently, the owners of said property had it covered in an “ecologically safe lime wash”, which is kind of like covering it with white paint. I think this is really good art. It is a big building that is completely white, and everything that surrounds it is grey or something like grey. There is a giant billboard on the property, and it got lime-washed, too.* I like what this place does to my brain. It stands out and blends in at the same time. It is an extremely unusual and complete bit of whiteness, but it is also just another boxy pile of steel and stucco amidst a bunch of other such piles.
Just about every day I pass this building and I see people taking pictures in front of it. Sometimes it is just tourists holding up their phones at each other, and sometimes it is a fancy camera pointed at some unusual clothes being worn by a person standing in an unusual way. Here is my problem. They're just standing in front of the building. The picture consists of 1) the person looking wonderful 2) a white chain link fence, 3) a blurry nondescript background of a general whiteness. The place is interesting now because of the context, and the strangeness that results from that. Then people take pictures of themselves with it, but they forget to include the context.
Therefore, global warming.
*The billboard was only white at first. It now has a picture of a famous person's face, and the name of some movie or TV show or something. The quality of the art is significantly diminished by this.
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