SFist reports:
Prolific Bay Area tagger and muralist Girafa (née Steven Free) pled guilty to two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts of vandalism in a Santa Clara Superior Court earlier this week. The 32-year-old Free, a San Francisco resident, was arrested back in October of 2009 on 10 felony vandalism cases in San Jose where the cops didn’t seem to be so appreciative of Girafa’s playful wall cartoons and personal branding efforts. According to Bay City News, eight of those felony charges were dropped, but the remaining counts have landed Free three years of probation and 38 grand worth of fines to the City of San Jose and various property owners.
 pled guilty to two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts of vandalism in a Santa Clara Superior Court earlier this week. The 32-year-old Free, a San Francisco resident, was arrested back in October of 2009 on 10 felony vandalism cases in San Jose […]</p>
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32 years old and tagging? Grow the fuck up loser. I hope he gets busted again and does some jail time. The convicts will LOVE his gangster ASS.
yeah, he definitely deserves to be put in jail and butt fucked. who the fuck are you, karl rove?
He was charged on 2 of the 10 felony charges and was fined $38,000 for damages, fuck him.
Fuck you; you’re full of shit.
You want to see a blight on the urban landscape? Look at the tags done by prolific asses such as J-A-S-T and Dan Plasma. You can’t go anywhere in the city without looking at their same-old-same-old unimaginative crap; one, like corporate advertising, assaults us with sameness, and the other one makes our eyes bleed with amateurish scrawls.
You probably don’t know it, but people travel to San Francisco from Europe, Latin America and Asia just to see and photograph the street artist scene.
Stick to your corporate cube.
You’re the type that would rather look at McDonald’s and Toyota billboards instead of something atypical.
My what anger; too bad it is sooo misplaced.
The fact is that doodles like this are ugly and have no artistic value. People may travel to SF for the artist scene, but not for this crap — vandalism is not creative, interesting or meaningful. You just need to get over yourself and start respecting others. Destroying property because of your self-centered need to express yourself is the definition of juvenile.
If you want fight against corporate billboards; go for it. No one likes them. But the existence of billboards is not a justification for acting like a spoiled child. Whether you are a tagger or just defending your friends, you need to grow up.
sorry sfdoggy, i think pedro here nailed it.
i’d even go so far though, to defend even the taggers that he put down. one man/woman’s doodle is another man/woman’s artistic masterpiece. it’s one thing to have strictly enforced punishments for anyone who can be identified as “vandals,” but you can’t just fine or punish the guy because you think his art is crap.
but the real question: is street art/graffiti/tagging really such a burden on ones eyes and quality of life? and even if it is, let the punishment fit the crime. give the guy a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush and make him work for 8 hours; don’t fine him more than he probably makes in a year.
sorry mina, i think sfdoggy here nailed it.
Your turn!
Sfdoggy: Except that people DO come to SF to see Graffiti art, as evidenced by the tourists wandering the mural alleys of the Mission.
You mean our justice system still works?
I like Girafa. It was always a pleasant surprise stumbling onto his latest piece. Especially when driving along 101 on the peninsula. It was like finding an easter egg. It isn’t tagging. It’s graffiti art. Tagging is the ineligible scribblings all over the city done with markers and spray cans. I’d rather see giraffe’s heads every where than tags.
Hear, hear.
you are ineligible.
Graffit art is just another name for vandalism. It is done by self-centered people who have no respect for others in their community. Maybe you like it, but very few others do. Those who own property or pay taxes are rightly fed up with the damage done by these juveniles.
False.
your views on graffiti/streetart are very ignorant and stereotypical. And judging by your comment you don’t know how big the graffiti community is.
on top of that most graffiti writers DO pay taxes and live relatively normal lives. just because you view it differently does not make it such a malicious crime