BORF!

My first summer in Athens, my roommate Sarah and I started stalking a graffiti symbol we'd first seen on the dumpster at the end of Adrianou Street.  We'd been delirious from hours of shopping in the hot sun and had sat down on a bench at the shaded end of the street to rest.  An older woman from the neighborhood walked up to deposit her garbage in the dumpster, labeled with the word BORF in huge letters.  Giggling, Sarah had said, "Look, she's opening BORF!"

 

It became a little game we played, and soon we were noticing Borfs all over the city.

 

When I returned to Athens in 2006, we found a huge Borf in the Monastiraki neighborhood, with a face in place of the O.  I took a picture and sent it to Sarah as a postcard.

 

Then, this morning as I was checking gridskipper to see if they had any off-the-wall reccomendations for stuff to do in Raleigh, one of the two articles that popped up was all about Borf and his 'coast to coast graffiti tour.' Apparently he made a stop in the RAL a few years back...and it turns out Borf is famous!

I started clicking on links, and pretty soon, the whole borf story had unraveled.  And its pretty interesting.
Gridskipper: Borf's Coast to Coast Graffiti Tour
N&O: Borf is Watching Us and Arrest May End Artist's Spree
DCist: Who is BORF?
Washington Post: The Mark of Borf

You can view my entire BORF album here. 

It is now apparent that I am very weird and need a life.

~RLM