zero per gallon

My* book is out! It’s on Amazon! It’s awesome! Newsweek calls it “Poignant … funny … and thought-provoking.” And it is! It’s about love and hate and beauty and secrets and sex and drugs and desires and tons of other stuff that someone out there is trying to tell you. It’s full of provocative photos and goodies, among them: conversation tips from 1952; instructions for how to talk dirty; the revolutionary history of speakers’ corner; a judge’s reprimand of a DC tagger; a harrowing message in a bottle; a creative history of the term “vandalism,” a tragic timeline of graffiti’s saddest day; and this fascinating summary, a la Harpers Index, of recent scientific breakthroughs in understanding graffiti:

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A psychologist in New Zealand found that graffiti in female restrooms tended to be more “polite and interactive,” whereas graffiti from male restrooms was more “argumentative and negative.” Economists in Brazil found that women from Brazil were four times as likely to write graffiti about sex as women from Spain, and that Spanish men were seven times more likely to write graffiti about politics than men from Germany. A criminologist in Indiana suggested that unprosecuted graffiti written by college student groups reaffirmed the “existence of a class-based system of justice.” An education researcher, studying graffiti by Latino adolescents in East Los Angeles, suggested that writing graffiti serves as a purposeful “public literary practice.” Public Health researchers in Scotland found that Europeans who live in areas with high levels of graffiti are 50% more likely to be obese. Three Swedish psychologists found that drunk, frustrated graffiti artists tended to create graffiti with more scrawling.
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Kinda bizarre but also cool, right? The whole book is like that, cause it’ was designed by Josh and Axel, of a little studio here in SF called Language In Common.

Here’s more stuff I did. See if you can find me in the photos.

*Yes, I said “my,” while I am perfectly aware that my name is not on the cover. How Designs, the publisher, had a contract with Josh and Axel. Josh and Axel hired me. I wrote 80% of the book, and get a big shout out on the “about the authors” page — but I didn’t get my name on the cover. You and me both: we are bummed. Yet we remain proud.