New York Minute 54 - Graffiti Assassin

While waiting for the subway last evening, I noticed a woman using a marker on one of the advertising posters hanging on the side the platform. She was small, no more than five feet tall, wearing a coat with the hood pulled up. She waited for the train to approach, left her mark on the poster, and then walked quickly to the far end of the platform.

As the train approached, I walked over to see what she had written. The six-foot-wide poster was an advertisement for a movie or a television series, one that I hadn't heard of previously. In the bottom center of the poster are the male and female leads. I don't remember the man's name, but the woman is a well-known actor named Amanda Peet.

The woman with the marker didn't write anything legible, not did she attempt to draw some sort of image or design. All she did was to scribble black ink over the face of the female actor. The left the man's face untouched.

The vandal deliberately targeted the face of the woman in the advertisement. Why is anyone's guess, but I have to admit that it unnerved me. This was a hateful act, and whether it was directed toward a specific woman or at the female image in general, it reveals serious emotional issues in the mind and heart of the perpetrator. Let's just be thankful that this cowardly criminal's weapon of choice - for the moment at least - is nothing more damaging than a magic marker.

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