The High Line was once a grimy set of abandoned train tracks. Now it's a fancy park for fancy people. So the fancy people want to scrub all the graffiti off the surrounding buildings, lest it hurt their fancy eyes.

The NYT says the city's buffed about half the buildings surrounding the High Line so far, so that Ed Norton—who I blame for everything bad that's High Line-related—will not have to have his Prada shades sullied by the vision of art that doesn't cost millions upon millions of dollars. Pretty dramatic set of before and after pics here; whoa, it looks so much blander now. Awesome.

Even more annoying than the rich High Line people here are, of course, the NYT.com commenters. Who are perhaps the same people!

Graffiti is trash. period.
Always glad to see vandalism repaired.
Graffiti is not ART, and it never was. There's no historical meaning to it, except that some uneducated loser wasted paint and time to deface an already attractive wall or whatever.
Graffiti is not art, and never will be.

Etc. Shut up, dumb mean people. Anyone echoing these sentiments (without an incredibly creative argument) in our comments, which are supposed to not suck, will be banned. Anyone posting pics of where they tagged the High Line wins a free kiss.

[Would have had this post up earlier except stupid Flickr was down. Pics: Niznoz, Zantony.]