Do you like graffiti?
Asked in polite company, the simple question prompts reactions as colorful as an art store’s spray paint section.
“I love it!” someone suspiciously prideful of his New York City years might declare. “It’s a shame that subway cars, long coated with a graffiti-proof glaze, don’t roll with the Wild Styles of the 1970s and 80s — a carousel of color and defiance, winding through the city’s tunnels and elevated platforms, a living art show.”
Others might guffaw.
“I think it’s annoying — stickers and paint tags aren’t easy to get off. Plus, it’s not their property!”
These two viewpoints reflect the spectrum of enthusiasm for graffiti here at the Source office. Somewhere near the end of the spectrum is me, the aforementioned quasi–New Yorker, and Aaron Switzer, the Source publisher and owner of 60 Source news boxes.
In other words, I’m the punk and he’s the man.
To be fair, Switzer has to shell out-of-pocket any time a property owner rings to complain how yet another news box is doodled up like the appendages of a tattoo apprentice.
Take it away, it’s an eyesore.
It’s these instances when our staff spies one such castaway news box in our garage, waiting to be picked up for a paint-stripping, scrubbing and repainting by our newspaper distributor, who charges several hundred bucks per refurbishment. About half — 30 news boxes — get the TLC each year.
In this liminal state, the news box, festooned in stickers advertising local breweries, outdoor brands and graffiti aliases, invites curious review. I often look them over, snickering when I catch something clever or outlandish.
SMOKE NARCAN is a personal favorite — the mandate is as hilarious as it is insane.
Other aliases range from JAEK CATLADY LPV, WAVE YISM and whatever PEØPLE’S EMPTY PLACE IT’S ALL IN UR HEAD is supposed to mean.
The declarative CRIME STATE sticker is particularly fun; applied to a Source news box seems like some kind of “TL;DR, fake news” nonsensical indictment.
Switzer says he gets it. Yet stickers and graffiti tags have been ticking upward the last 15 years, he added.
“When I pull them off and start reading them, they’re actually pretty funny,” Switzer told me recently when he sidled up next to my filing cabinet — his filing cabinet! — which I’d plastered with stickers.
Switzer’s seen it all.
“Stickers are political, of sports teams, your favorite bands,” he said. “But some are offensive, for sure, whatever your standard of content is. People do not want those in their neighborhood. In the interest of being a good neighbor, we try to keep them clean.”
He doesn’t, however, find SMOKE NARCAN funny.
“I don’t even get what that means.”
Despite his playful chagrin, Switzer actually doesn’t make a plea to stop covering up Source news boxes.
“I think that would be one of my more pointless endeavors.”
This article appears in the Source June 11, 2026.
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