Seen on 15th Ave, between Denny and Howell, near Group Health: A purple car covered in scraps of paper with tiny, neat handwriting on it.

car_1.JPG

(Sorry this is not such a great pic, but you get the idea; the car is plastered with paper and tape.)

Detail:

car_2.JPG

First sign reads:

Untitled

Materials: Destroyed shreds of paper, which was once a novel worked on for one year by an alcohol/enraged EX girlfriend-like creature.

Purple ’96 Hyundai Accent

Second sign reads:

Those who possess an insufficient mental ability express anger through destruct-sion. Anybody else can express rage through more creative means.

There is also a space left for comments, most of which side with the car defacer. So far.

Sean Nelson has worked at The Stranger on and off since 1996. He is currently Editor-at-Large. His past job titles included: Assistant Editor, Associate Editor, Film Editor, Copy Editor, Web Editor, Slog...

22 replies on “Revenge Art?”

  3. @2 nice
    i’m such a cliche -still married to a girl who scrawled lipstick revenge messages all over my VW Squareback 25 years ago.
    best of the luck to them.

  5. Not only is this cliche but the sentiment expressed is patently false. Some of humanities most creative minds have expressed their anger through destruction. Van Gogh springs to mind.

  7. Never go to bed with anyone crazier than you are.

    A Providence, RI band called Small Factory did a song lo these twenty years ago that went, “if you break my heart, I’ll smash up your fucking car”. Today, we live in a more crafty, cupcakey world, so it’s “stick lots of little bits of scribbled paper on your car”.

  9. Seattle is so fey.

    Right now the couple to the upper left of me has been having their same argument for the last 3 hours.

    It seems to revolve around a guy who had a heart attack, and because his son was their first, his wife is angry at him because he thinks she didn’t save his life.

    I think. But anyway, you see how it is here in Kent, we just booze up and yell out the back porch. No “clever notes” for us’ins.

  10. As everyone knows, the best revenge is living a great life in absence of the old partner. Notes stuck to a car indicate the person still hasn’t moved on.

    The car owner is the victor in this case. The note paster is the loser, and needs to learn how to live life without the car owner.

    This is merely one example of an absolute victim/loser failure. Sad and unfortunate…. move on, young grasshopper… do not dwell in the past.

  11. Its not that easy to move on, and maybe the car owner is an asshole. There are always 2 sides to a relationship and especially a breakup. Maybe the car owner won’t let the other person move on. Don’t be so quick to judge, we’ve all had our crazy moments.

  15. I’m not sure the car belongs to the EX girlfriend-like creature.

    If the Ex girlfriend-like creature abandoned the novel project and told him to toss it, this is a constructive expression of rage…. provided it is his own, or a friend’s, car.

    If this was something she is still working on, or this is her car, then he’s a passive-aggressive dink who destroys a year’s worth of work just because he’s angry. Novels are a lot of work… if this was her only copy and she cared about it, he may as well have killed her cat.

    In the second case… if she’d slaved a year over the novel to come up with 10 pagers or something stupid, it’s just funny.

  21. To anyone who cares: the shreds of paper was once a nearly completed novel which was destroyed by car owner in a fit of rage. How would you feel if someone poked holes in your canvas…the writer wanted his literature to be shown to the public, and one way or another, it was.

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