Terminus: The CSX Gallery

Vampire Monkey
Rob M-March 12th, 2006

What if Francis Bacon and Ralph Steadman lived in Atlanta and chose graffiti as their visual weapon of choice? You might get a glimpse of this possibility if you were exiting the Innman Park/Reynolds Town Station on the East Line of Marta and took the left exit. There, if you were but to glance over your shoulder, one would see a series of paintings that run the length of the gray wall that acts as a membrane between Seaboard Avenue and the CSX line. In fact it's been there since the last days of the 20th century and I only discovered it by chance when I paused to watch two gentleman get into a nice quick fist fight. It wasn't much really, three or four punches tops and the other guy hauled ass to safety. I had a good laugh and then I saw these images looking back up at me.

And then everytime I would get off at Innman Park Station I would walk over and see if they were still there. Since the pieces were tagged on the inside of the wall there's probably not too many people who've had a chance to scope them out. Year after year I vowed to one day capture these images on film. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon I finally loaded up my camera, mounted my bike and decided I was going on a commando-photography mission.

I'm sure you've read how that turned out! But while the rail bulls got my name and number, I escaped with a few dozen shots of the forbidden inner wall of Seaboard.


Railroad Imps
Rob M-March 12th, 2006


Close up of 'Vampire Monkey'- nasty little fucker ain't he?

I hope to post a few more of the shots I got down there and I seriously urge any photographers, psychogeographers or even graffiti enthuaists to go check it out some time.