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Park Slopers Utterly Baffled by Meaning of Graffiti Tag ‘You Would’

  • 12/23/10 at 3:45 PM

Some Park Slope residents are having a hard time wrapping their minds around a series of graffiti tags that have started to appear along fences, traffic-control boxes, and even in the F train. What could "You would" possibly mean? “It’s a very deep question,” Seth Wischik told The Brooklyn Paper. “Nothing comes to mind; it’s like a blank. Depends on where it is. It depends on context.” Whoa, Seth, you are kind of blowing our minds, too, with that analysis. In his own stab at deciphering the cryptic phrase, Chris Conti attempted a mind-meld with the tagger. “I feel like it’s him saying that whatever I think it means, he would say, ‘You would think that.’” Totally. Tom Miskel didn't give the graffiti artists as much credit. “Maybe that’s all he could think of." Hrmm, how can we explain "you would,' which according to Urban Dictionary has been around since at least 2005, to Park Slopers? It's sorta like if you're just trying to order a maple syrup latte at Gorilla Coffee and the grupster in front of you starts chewing the barista's ear off about the Deerhunter album playing on the speakers. It's like, of course he would do that. No? Then how about: Of course a newspaper would try to turn a two-word phrase into a symbol of the generational divide. Now you get it?

Upset at graffiti? You would! [Brooklyn Paper]

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