Listen for the sounds of vomiting.
  • Listen for the sounds of vomiting.
Okay, that headline isn't actually true: We have plenty of dumb graffiti in Seattle (aside to Putrid: I appreciate your word selection—it's a nice word, especially in the context of bourgie-pretty-heavy Seattle—but seeing you everywhere I look means the word has changed the environment enough to no longer have meaning in it, so please stop), and we have plenty of art made by people who are just as egotistical, macho, and limelight-grabby as the dum-dum Mr Brainwash.

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But we also have a strain of memorial street art in Seattle that's well worth appreciating. I write about it in this week's paper, in a piece called "Death and Graffiti: A Tour Through A Tomb in Sodo and What It Has to Do With Banksy's New Movie," in which I have this to say about Brainwash:

If Warhol threw up, and then Damien Hirst threw up on top of that, and then the throwup threw up, Mr. Brainwash's work would be the result. ...Street art is dead. Long live street art.

Brainwash is the subject of Banksy's new movie Exit Through the Gift Shop, which opens at the Harvard Exit tomorrow, and which I totally recommend. It's hilarious. Its tagline is: "The world's first street art disaster movie," and this is an apt description.

Meanwhile, the piece in Seattle that I wrote about, by NKO and No Touching Ground, appeared in the paper (and on our web version of the paper) with a photograph by Dan Hawkins, who has been taking pictures of disused buildings in this town for the better part of two decades.

It's an interesting shot, but it's during daylight, and I wanted also to get across the eerie cast of the piece at night. So here's what I took with my cell phone camera. They're crappy, yes. But I hope they capture a little of what it felt like being inside (click to enlarge).

The employee lockers still have the names on them from the days when this was a condiment factory.
  • The employee lockers still have the names on them from the days when this was a condiment factory.

An admittedly blurry shot of one tiny section of the walls painted by NKO, lit up by multiple flashlights of different hues.
  • An admittedly blurry shot of one tiny section of the walls painted by NKO, lit up by multiple flashlights of different hues.

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One of the hundreds of documents strewn on the floor in what was clearly the accounting department. Handwritten bills date back to 1954.
  • One of the hundreds of documents strewn on the floor in what was clearly the accounting department. Handwritten bills date back to 1954.

You're not supposed to visit tomb under any circumstances, and the building could be demolished any day. But if you're craving it, I've given you the artists' names. Hunt it down.