The response was great! The suggestions were hysterical! Clever! Such entertaining bathroom reading! They touched off a spate of bathroom graffiti that hummed along as we bookselling gals shared our entertaining opinions in anonymous fashion while putting that toilet roll holder to good use. BOOKSTORE bathroom graffiti should be BOOK-related, I thought, so I wrote a book-related question that seemed, again, to give a nod to traditional bathroom graffiti topics: If there was a direct correlation between quality of writing and sex appeal, what authors (male or female) would you want to sleep with? I began wondering why we were having this debate in a bookstore bathroom stall, of all places. (A heady topic for stall chatter, I thought.) As several stall users weighed in with their responses, the anonymous arguments got a little heated. One bookseller wrote a question on the wall, asking which booksellers considered themselves feminists. It was open season for graffiti in Wellesley Booksmith’s Women’s Restroom, Stall #1. It took less than 12 hours for another note to appear alongside mine, this one a bold statement of the obvious: "Someone’s been playing with the toilet paper holder!" But wait! I recognized that handwriting - our assistant manager had written that note!! If SHE could get away with it, well…? That decided it. (The number being, of course, our store’s phone number.) Giving a nod to traditional bathroom graffiti, I (it’s true) scrawled the following message on the bathroom wall: FOR A GOOD READ CALL (781) 431-1160. I answered their twin calls with a call-related message of my own. I was suffering from stall monotony, as was the stall itself! I could hear it, calling out for change, just as that suspended pencil called out for use - for a pencil adventure! So one day, I brought the two together. I would look at our yellowed stall walls, marred with shoe smudges here, scotch tape there, and see the same boring signs (do not flush paper towels) and posters (Bridget Jones’s Diary) that I’d been looking at for almost four years. Deprived of the opportunity to be used for its intended purpose.
Problem solved!Įxcept that that pencil began calling to me. Since our bathroom isn’t open to the public, there was no real need to resolve this inconvenience, and we just got used to it, annoying though it was.īut that all changed the day some genius came up with the idea to use a PENCIL as the crossbar! It was perfect! A new pencil, already sharpened, turned out to be just the right length to be suspended between the two prongs.
For a long time, we ladies would suffice with the toilet paper roll either awkwardly rolling, perpendicularly, on one of the prongs, or sitting on the toilet tank behind us. The prongs that stick out from the wall were there, but there was no "crossbar" on which to slide the roll so that it would be suspended between the prongs. One of the stalls was, for quite some time, without an adequate toilet paper roll holder. The women’s restroom at our store has three stalls. my job has turned me into a graffiti writer. It is our goal to be an inclusive organization and event that values and welcomes all artists and voices.I am not usually one who engages in delinquent behavior, but…. We understand that words matter, and that “urban” has become widely misused to exploit and stigmatize people of color, especially within the arts. While our original name “Urban Scrawl” started out as a play on words to critique “urban sprawl” and the suburbanization of Columbus, we recognize that not everyone may view our name through this lens. We understand the powerful role that the arts play in our culture and, as our culture has shifted in the 16 years since we started, it's now more important than ever to set an example. Scrawl speaks to our growth – both up to this point and in the years to come. Our new name is welcoming to all. This year’s event will feature a larger footprint, more community partners, and new experiences. Scrawl has been the shorthand that our artists, organizers, and long-time attendees have used for years. Our new name reflects growth and change.
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