The Evolution of 바카라�Slap바카라� Sticker Culture as Art

My interest in sticker bombing as a subculture grew from a conversation I had with one of my students in Seattle. She was about to apply for college, and while helping her with her application essay, I read her take on the skateboarding community. Besides mentioning how she 3D-printed fingerboards and turned them into a small business, her essay also discussed how misunderstood the skateboarding community is across the country. When I showed some interest, she shared how the community is popularly perceived as "sticker bombers" who vandalise public spaces.

I did what I do best in these situations when the generation gap stings: I returned home and looked up sticker bombing. Considered predominantly an extension of graffiti culture, the streets, subways, and alleys of many cities around the world are filled with these slap stickers (also known as 바카라�slaps바카라�), which carry the legacy of illegal graffiti. In fact, they are considered faster and safer options compared to the risks involved with graffiti. They are easier to hand-draw and print.

Sticker Bombers and Skaters

There are different reasons behind the existence of these slap stickers. Besides reclaiming the streets, and promoting various businesses, they often run commentaries on political issues plaguing the cities they are found in. Needless to say, it is always the young people of a city leading this guerrilla movement of rewriting the streets. Much like the skaters who reclaim public architecture through movement and play, the sticker bombers reclaim visual space. Teenagers in baggy clothes, riding their sticker-covered skateboards across handrails, parking lots, benches, curbs, and driveways, are often the same ones slapping stickers onto traffic posts, bike racks, subway walls, newspaper stands, utility boxes바카라�even dumpsters.

A Brief History of 바카라�Slaps바카라�

In 1935, Stanton Avery, a Californian innovator, invented the world바카라�s first self-adhesive sticker label using a die-cutting machine, paving the way for self-adhesive stickers to become ubiquitous. Before 1935, especially during World War II, stickers, posters, and bills were used as a quiet propaganda tool, but they required glue on the back. Avery바카라�s invention바카라�initially intended for price tags and other industrial uses바카라�changed everything. In the 1950s and '60s, vinyl stickers made their debut, and political activists and students began using them to promote the causes they believed in. These stickers were fast, affordable, and nearly impossible to censor.

With the rise of punk rock bands and skateboarding culture in the '70s, stickers began to multiply, making appearances on public spaces and architecture across the United States. Punk rock bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash used stickers as a fast way to promote their shows and spread anti-establishment messages, which also became a key part of their branding. By this time, brands and companies had started printing and distributing their own logo stickers. Skateboard companies like Santa Cruz and Powell Peralta followed suit, printing their own stickers, which ended up on the bikes, skateboards, and helmets of teenagers. This moment highlighted the growing intersection between skateboarders and sticker bombers, reinforcing their interconnected reputation.

Logo-driven art reached its peak in the '80s and '90s. During this time, artists began using postal labels to create their 바카라�slap바카라� art. In 1989, Shepard Fairey, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, created a sticker featuring the face of French wrestler André the Giant. While the sticker was inspired by an in-joke and didn바카라�t hold deeper meaning beyond what met the eye, it was printed in the millions, with André바카라�s face appearing all across the United States. The early 2000s saw the rise of street art, with artists like Banksy, Faile, D*Face, and Miss Van leaving their mark globally, establishing sticker bombing as a powerful visual language. By the early 2000s, stickers had spread to other countries like France, Japan, Brazil, the UK, and beyond.

Urban Spaces and Stickers

One thing I noticed while walking through Portland (popularly considered the sticker capital of the United States), New York City, and Seattle is that slaps mostly exist in urban spaces. From what I understand, aside from the fact that city environments are dense with hard metal surfaces like poles, signs, and benches, cities are also melting pots where subcultures collide and coexist in close proximity. Moreover, cities typically have more viewers to interact with the artwork, unlike rural areas.

Mary Oliver is Gangstalking Me

The stickers I바카라�ve encountered over the past year include, but are not limited to, political messaging. While I바카라�ve seen numerous stickers and artwork supporting the BLM movement, critiquing anti-abortion laws, and defending LGBTQIA+ rights, there is also a subset of stickers that capture the spontaneous spirit of a private joke turned into art. One such sticker that I spotted in various places around Seattle read, 바카라�Mary Oliver is Gangstalking me.바카라� As someone who appreciates Mary Oliver바카라�s poetry, I wondered what she had done to earn the reputation of a gangstalker바카라�바카라�. A Reddit thread explained that it was being printed by a poetry enthusiast, who perhaps believes she is a one-woman gang due to her prowess in the craft. The idea is that there바카라�s no escaping her influence in art and poetry, though it바카라�s impossible to know for sure.

But one can be certain of one thing: the youth of a city, with their inside jokes, wit, banter, and political awareness, have managed to establish a private network of communication among themselves within public spaces. If one considers how public spaces are regulated by rules and etiquettes that exclude dialogue, then sticker bombing operates in the realm of retaliation. The idea is to exclude those who practice the politics of exclusion바카라�and there바카라�s some poetic justice in that.

The Politics of Being Young

After reading about sticker culture and witnessing it firsthand, I바카라�m convinced that the youth of a city바카라�armed with self-adhesive stickers바카라�aren바카라�t just reclaiming urban space. They바카라�re also reclaiming art바카라�art, which has long been viewed as something vendible to stay relevant in the age of social media. In a world that primarily understands art, like everything else, as a commodity to be bought and consumed, sticker bombers have sidestepped the need for profit. Sticker art doesn바카라�t rely on polite nods from those who gather in museum halls to curiously stare at walls. It exists even when someone, standing at a traffic signal, chuckles at it before the walk sign flashes and they move on. This is where they바카라�ve won, uncontested.