Click on the photo to enlarge it.
Zach Smith, who was responsible for a rash of Mahlerian graffiti in Washington, DC in the late seventies and early eighties, sent me this picture taken in the fall of 1977, showing his handiwork on the base of the Arizona Avenue Trestle. In a 1995 article for The New Yorker, I related how the graffiti caught my eye as I rode a school bus back and forth to the Potomac School, in McLean, VA. (I misremembered it as "Mahler Lives.") This was not the first time the Austrian master's name had appeared by the side of Canal Road. In a 2009 post, I noted that Stephen Chanock, later of the National Cancer Institute, had originally painted "Mahler Grooves" at this location in 1972. Zach Smith reapplied the legend five years later, and in 1982 painted "Gustav Mahler [heart] Alma" in the same spot. The latter was duly reported in The Washington Post. Mahler graffiti also appeared in Toronto circa 2007. May the trend long continue.
Photo: Zach Smith's Mom.
