Graffiti isn’t art, it’s an ugly string of threats

The words appeared overnight on a new local café. “NOTHING’S REAL,” it said in spray-painted letters two feet high. The café owner, who had remade this wall with its original Victorian bricks, was incensed. “Building a new business from scratch on four hours’ sleep a night,” she wrote on Instagram, “is real.” Neighbours helped her scrub away the words. Graffiti provokes strong emotions. Driving through Camberwell last winter, it seemed suddenly to be everywhere. You can’t be too precious in inner London. You expect scribble on bus shelters or over shop shutters. Sometimes in a nothing place, like a grim underpass or a railway arch, a piece of street art makes the city feel vividly alive. But this was different. On a parade of restaurants, nail bars, estate agents and hairdressers, every business was defaced. Graffiti was on walls, over windows, across shop signs. This wasn’t the hipster nihilism (with its correct apostrophe!) that blighted the café, but tags, those one-word logos, the tom-cat piss-spray that says nothing more than “I am here” and, since many denote a gang’s turf boundaries, “keep out or else”. • Nick Ross: Police used to stop crime — no more. It’s time to go...