SE 28th Pl. & Powell mural

The next stop on our mural tour takes us to SE 28th Place at Powell, where a long retaining wall holds up the parking lot for a Wendy's fast food place. At some point, the wall was painted in bright primary colors, and it was either done by kids or designed to look that way. Since then it's been tagged extensively, so in parts it's impossible to tell what the original design might have been. Which is sort of unusual; there's a popular theory that murals deter tagging, out of professional courtesy or something. That's the entire rationale behind Weston roses, for instance. So maybe this was a popular graffiti wall before the mural went in, and it gets tagged now out of force of habit. Or maybe the cutesy aspect offended enough people, sort of the way Star Wars fans hate Jar-Jar Binks, so the usual unwritten code doesn't apply here.