American Graffiti

"Three strikes and you're grout"

This is only one of tens of a strange genre of graffiti I have seen only here in Berkeley. It involves writing in the tiny space of grout in between tiles in public bathrooms. The phrases always are made up of some pun using the word grout. Other examples include movie titles, like "The grout, the bad, and the ugly" or simple words, like "groutrageous."

I first noticed these peculiar scribblings during my freshman year at UC Berkeley, in 1993. It might have been in a bathroom in Dwinelle Hall, but I'm not sure. Since then, I have seen these in bathrooms all over UC Berkeley, as well as in the rest of the city. This particular example I ran into at the men's room at the UC theater on University Avenue.

I don't think this type of graffiti has any deep meaning, but it is a great example of intellectual fun. It makes sense that it exists around a University where people are intelligent, yet very young and therefore still trying to amuse themselves and others by doing things like writing on walls. I imagine it all started when one person made one of these grout puns and it was seen by another student who, while urinating, thought of another pun and wrote it on another section of grout. Soon the "groutfiti", as I like to call it, spread and people spontaneously thought of puns while pissing. Usually though, you see a bunch of these together, since one probably inspires another in the aforementioned manner.

Informant information

Myself, 22

Italian American Student

Italian, English, Spanish, French

Berkeley, California

November 5, 1997