Ever heard of Stamford? A sleepy little town, well hardly even that, around 100 miles north of London, Stamford, as their website exclaims is ‘The Finest Stone Town in England’. You get the picture, cobbled streets and babbling brooks, pretty… dull. It’s nearer Peterborough than London, but I can fully understand why they wouldn’t want to mention that, Peterborough was a heavy contributor to some of my earliest moments of deep depression, if you don’t think architecture can damage your (mental) health take a look at the Corn Exchange next time you’re there. No, in fact don’t, just don’t go there at all. i used pass by on visits my old Nan in Cambridgeshire, the yearly seasonal greetings trek with Mum and my sister as a child. It was supposed to be a treat I reckon, but I think it was something more to do with the parents’ divorce and Dad’s minimal visiting rights and wages at the time. Nicky, my long-time estranged sister (we don’t get on) didn’t mind, but she’d never really liked dad, or men for that matter,. She hadn’t even invited him to her wedding a few years back, she’s divorced now, too.

Let’s skip the biography, my parents married young, they divorced young, end of - the fact is another poor soul recently had to venture up that way, the flattest place in Britain. His name’s Shepard Fairey, you might know him better as the street art impresario behind the mammoth ‘Obey Giant‘, a stencil nut and prodigious defacer of public property, (for the good of mankind mind you). Let me just knock you to the side one more time, I received a frighteningly conformist comment at my post regarding the UK Government’s defacing of Banksy’s work, I let it through, I’m not a blog fascist, but if you really want to tow the UK Government’s line (this guy was from the USA by the way, and a so-called Banksy fan), don’t tell me how much we should respect the law. I’m getting too long in the tooth to be lectured by a transatlantic authority-loving whipper-snapper on how to behave. No, I don’t run around spraying stencils all over the shop, but that doesn’t mean when a modern phenomenon of the scene does, I have to ignore it. There’s enough censorship in the U.K as it is. Remember Americans, we Brits have no Bill of Rights, no Constitution, we are subjects not citizens, all we have are words and pictures, so just let it be.

Back to Shepard, so there he is, late October, flying over to the U.K, dreaming of the bright-lights of London, you can just imagine the phone call that dragged him here, "Hey Obey guy, come and make your name in Britain - we love you more than Banksy! Yes that’s right, London. Yes Stamford is in London, yes just a short ride on the tube… Peterborough? Never heard of it!"

So he turns up, suitcases full of stencils, the cans no doubt confiscated by the anally-retentive terrorist-phobic customs officers at the airport - still they don’t mind probing where the sun don’t shine. There he is, a hero of the graffito world waiting to be picked up, and taken to… Stamford - "The Finest Stone Town in Britain".

Still he made a good job of it, he filled a derelict basement-cum-music-dive into something worth seeing, check out the photos, and yes, they do have cameras in Stamford…

The saddest thing of all is that they even convinced him to stencil up a few Perterborough hotspots too. I wonder if their council will be debating the credibility of Fairey’s art now he’s back home across the pond. Like I said again and again, most places would kill for a piece of art, as long as it’s not the backyard of the British Government.

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This post is tagged architecture, art, Banksy, Britain, Cambridgeshire, Corn Exchange, council, England, government, graffiti, graffito, grim up north, London, mental health, OBEY, Obey Giant, Peterborough, Shepard Fairey, Stamford, State Approved, state control, UK, USA, vandalism