I have gotten the word. It is "intense". The business I am to visit is Intense Finishing. They're in North Hollywood. I'm curious now because when I tried to look them up on yellowpages.com they weren't there. I can't find them listed anywhere except on the Google Maps. The adventure begins.

So I did a reverse search and discovered "Ultimate Finishing." For those of you who don't know, finishing is the final layer sprayed onto painted surfaces. Finishing can be done in all different textures (I'm sure you've all heard of glossy versus matte finish, same concept). Mostly it's done on metal work which means the biggest user of finishing services are car auto body repair shops.

A little background information:

I strongly dislike taggers. I dislike people who seem hell-bent on marking someone else's property. I particularly dislike taggers who tag over murals and such. It's like they can't stand something beautiful and must destroy it with their own brand of ugly.

On the other hand, I was raised to not disregard something out of hand as wrong or bad unless I have some experience of it myself. This was taught to me in an effort for me to try to understand things that I didn't immediately understand and connect with as opposed to just disliking it because I didn't want to try to figure it out. Mostly, my parents were concerned with me eating vegetables.

That being said, I wanted to try this task solely with the idea that I would be leaving a mark, either permanent or semi-permanent, on the building. Since I was using a word associated with the business, I didn't feel so bad. But I was still going to leave a mark on someone else's property. And I wanted to see if there was some sort of rush that I didn't understand that drove people to do this in 12-foot, blazing, colored, ornate script.

When I arrived at the business in question, named Universal Powder Coating, I realized that my task would be more difficult. Instead of being its own building, it is merely another address in a string of addresses along a (VERY) long brick wall. This wall is interspersed with barred windows and punctured with gated front doors. The business I was going to had its front gate shut, but the door, just a couple feet behind it, was wide open. There was also a motorcycle parked in front of the door so I was assuming that there was someone in the office keeping an eye on it. I wanted to make sure that I marked close enough to the gate that no one would mistake the mark to be for another business, but I also didn't want to get caught.

I got out of my car with camera in-hand, already deciding that if someone asked what I was doing, I would shove the Sharpie in any available orifice and say I was taking pictures of the motorcycle. I do like motorcycles.

Then I walked up very close to the building and commenced to writing. Porous, rough brick does not hold Sharpie very well. But I was determined, so I went over it several times. I could hear someone moving in the front office, but I never saw someone, and no one seemed to be aware of me.

There were a couple of times that cars drove by. And one time that a worker from across the street came out and got in his truck parked right in front of me. I studiously stared at the motorcycle as he drove away, completely forgetting to snap any photos of it to reinforce my cover-story.

When all was said and done, I got back in my car and just breathed for a little bit. Then I realized that if anyone was staring intently (which by that time I was sure every window hid an observer) that would look even more suspicious. So I made the U-turn to get back out to the main drag. In a final push to show all the people watching (which there probably were none) that I wasn't scared of anything, I stopped in my car right in front of the building and snapped the last picture. You can sort of see my mark in that one. It's on the brick eighth from the bottom, right next to the door frame.

I do understand the rush, now, that people feel. But I still don't like it. I think the rush from a roller coaster is much more enjoyable as it doesn't make someone else feel sad.

Enjoy the pictures.