This is the graffitti in my neighborhood....

It's amazing how easy it is to find inspiration out on the streets. I've always been a fan of graffitti. I don't mean tags, which are annoying and sometimes gang related (though I suspect a lot of them here are just done by bored teenagers.) Mural, like the kind done in San Francisco by muralistas are amazing, but they are too official to be graffitti and too amazingly done. But graffitti art, simple, sometimes impressive, I love. It is the work of an anonymous artist who is viewed by so many, often ignored and who never receive credit for what they have done. There is so much cool graffitti on my street- Mittenwalder Strasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg 61. Kreuzberg 61 is like the San Francisco neighborhoods The Mission and Noe Valley got together and had a love child. It's got a bit of the organic food loving, yuppie side like Noe Valley but is also filled with hipsters and is Multi-Kulti like the Mission (only with Arabs and Turks, not Mexicans.) It's also a bit on the pricey side for Berlin, though anyone who lives in New York, San Francisco or London would scoff at the word "pricey." For example, my husband and I live in a beautiful three bedroom flat with a huge living room, parquet floors and vaulted ceilings and we only pay 900 Euros a month (and again, for Berlin this is a bit on the expensive side!) Anyway, I love this area and I love my street and I love some of the graffitti art that is on it. I took pictures yesterday when I went out for a walk of some of my favorite stuff, like Pete the Frog King, Edwin the shy ghost and Ralf the angry worm (names I, of course, thought up myself!) Take a look at the slide show underneath to see the different works. I'm planning on doing something with them for my etsy shop, schaufenster (http://www.schaufenster.etsy.com). What exactly I don't know yet. Maybe magnets or a book? We'll see where inspiration guides me!