Popular art & graffiti

There's a LOT of "street art" in Athens. Some of it is obviously political.  Though we don't always understand the slogans, Ken can usually recognize the names of the political parties.  

The one on the right protests the rise of the "Golden Dawn" (fascist-nativist) party which never had more than 3% of the popular vote, but since "austerity," jumped to 20% in the last election. 

And a lot is in English.  This tends to be the case in the tourist areas, such as in the picture below, but the legend above, FUCK THE NEW WORLD ORDER,  was on a street far from tourist attractions.

This is across from Syntagma Square, where a lot of the political protests originate, because it is a major hub and near a whole complex of government buildings.  In case you can't quite make out the writing:  CAPITALISM IS KILLING YOU.  And then, in a separate message: FASCISM WON'T SAVE YOU.  

Even though Ken knows the many forms of the type-set Greek alphabet (lower-case letters may have more than one form, depending on where they occur in the word), when people write informally, a non-native speaker may not be able to decipher them.  (Think of the variation in how we form our own letters.) It's even harder when the letters are cartoon-like and exaggerated. Apparently, when it's our native language, we have enough context to adjust as we read.   He couldn't figure out the word on the right.
 

 There are also a lot of murals. The one above is on the side of a several-story high building at one exit to a Metro station. At the other exit, a homeless man was sleeping.  (It's a little hard to align homelessness with hand-made rugs, but there it is!)  Apparently there's no "sit/lie" ordinance, because we've been there several time and his stuff is always there, even when he is not.  

   The mural on the right was featured in a local art show--we took the photo before we knew that.  It's just a block or so away from "Fuck the new world order"-- not a tourist area.  In case you can't tell the size, note the man wheeling a bicycle in the left side of that photo (which we took from across the street during a break in auto traffic). And the left side of the artwork appears to depict a spider-like electronic something-or-other  



And, of course, there's graffiti of the kind one sees in most metropolitan areas--on subway cars (but here, only on the line that is above-ground much of the time). 

And then there's the quasi-political(?)--not sure how to characterize it.  This is also a very non-tourist part of town.