05/20/2026
Last Saturday, as Kalsang and I rolled up our store shutter to open, we noticed that our metal shutter gate was “vandalized” by a graffiti writing. This is something we had always dreaded having been in East Village for a while now. Everywhere we went, we noticed graffiti writings all over the store gates in this neighborhood. We have even talked with some shop owners in the past who were distraught that people had vandalized the glass window of their stores and they had to pay huge sums to have them cleaned or replaced. Needless to say, we were sad seeing this on our space as well. Some of the spray paint had passed further through the metal door on our glass window, which was the worst ‘cos we dont how it will go away now. Our first reaction was - “Let’s paint over it now right away”. We then checked our security camera to see a group of young people engaging themselves late night/early morning time. They looked like kids! We then decided to read and research on graffiti writing as a culture in this neighborhood and the history behind it. We are reading about graffiti as art or graffiti as vandalism and reading on both sides of the matter. We are personally not a fan graffiti writing on other’s property, especially commercial, but if this means some sort of expression of personal art or tagging (as we are learning the graffiti lingos) for whatever reasons, we dont want to disrespect. So for now, the graffiti stays! It hurts our hearts a little bit seeing this every morning as we open our shop because personally to us, it doesn’t go with the temperament of the pottery shop. But we fear that if we repaint this clean, it will only be a matter of time before someone tags it again.
