Places: The Graffiti Shop

[Vex Harrow]

The Graffiti Shop
414 S Mill Ave Ste B102
Tempe, AZ 85281
Phone: (480) 921-8821

Inexplicably, The Graffiti Shop doesn’t have any web presence in the form of reviews or people talking about it. I suppose that this adds to its lurking, hole-in-the-wall atmosphere and presence on the Ave, but it is a large part of my experience of Mill Ave. Anyone who visits our street should also spend a moment to drop in. It is the quintessential head shop and grunge parlor for our strip.

Graffiti has been around Mill since I started hanging out there over a decade ago and probably has outlived my own experience there by many more years. The proprietor, Lawrence, is a smiling old hippy with long hair, a crass mouth, and a true entrepreneurial spirit. Finding the place in real life is about as difficult as it is finding it on the web—there are no signs pointing there, just a steady stream of gritty, interested parties looking for the Mill Ave underground.

Walk along the red bricks, take a seeming wrong-turn, and suddenly appearing there, inside of a courtyard with a gazebo, a doorway with an unlit sign and the proclamation, “PAINT ON OUR WALLS,” beckons all comers.

The Graffiti Shop makes an appearance in Mill Avenue Vexations in Chapter 4: The Calm Before and will probably appear a few times more as the story progresses.

[jorwyn]

I miss Lawrence.
... Miss ducking into Graffiti in the short but abusive August torrents.
Buy chai upstairs at the little coffee booth, then trip down the stairs laughing like fools into this basement shop.
Clothes, weird goth jewelry, and of course paraphernalia abound. Sandwiched in between the bricks underneath the "respectable" shops above.
How can we not love Graffiti?