Some decent street art on an abandoned building

There are a lot of abandoned buildings in my part of town right now. When the closure of the country happened I would guess that around 50% of the small businesses went out of business. These days walking down the streets can be a little bit sad because while the chain minimarts are still doing well, the small mom and pop businesses have closed for good because they didn't have the megabucks of corporate backing.

But that's not what this is about. This is about some good street art that I guess qualifies as street art because it was put up there after the business was already permanently shut. I don't know if the person or people did it with permission but it seems likely that they would have because this doesn't look like a rushed, under-the-cover-of-darkness, job but rather something that was well thought out and carefully executed.

To really talented artists out there this might seem quite basic, but for someone like me that has almost zero artistic capabilities this is really good in my eyes.

There isn't much in the way of good street art here and most of it is done with brushes, not spray. Unfortunately most of the spray stuff you see around the town is rushed tags that are really awful and can't even be considered art, they are vandalism and a blemish on the community.

I have been told that you can not get spray paint without showing ID here and this is probably the reason why that is the case. If someone who doesn't work in a trade is on a list of folks who bought spray paint and there is all of a sudden a bunch of tags going up, you can be assured that they are going to be the first people questioned by the police. But this is still Vietnam so I am sure there are other ways of getting this stuff, not everyone obeys the laws and I bet there are shops out there that are just interested in sales and don't pay any attention to the registration process.

When you get in close on this piece you can definitely see that it was done meticulously with brushes and I don't remember the name of the famous artist - perhaps it was Van Gogh or Monet - but up close it looks like nothing... you have to back up a bit to get the full majesty of the scene.

The alleyway that the picture is depicting still exists in many places in Vietnam and when you encounter ones that look like this they are almost always in touristy areas. For the most part people in Vietnam don't actually live like this anymore, at least not where I live. I do like these areas when I find them though, even if they are there just to attract tourists.

Anyway, I really liked this one and it is just a few blocks away from my condo. I would have really enjoyed being there when the artists were making it and I hope they do more work in the area. It's nice and I would like to see them paint over the garbage vandalism tags that are all over the place.