Borf!

Overview

Borf was a ubiquitous graffiti campaign around the Northwest quadrant of Washington in the mid 2000s, from simple tagging to complete sentences to two-color stencils to the massive defacement on an overhead exit sign from the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. Tsombikos was arrested in 2005, after tips led police to his latest tag. Both the nickname "Borf" and the Borf face belonged to Bobby Fisher, a close friend of Tsombikos' who had committed suicide. The Borf Brigade asserted that capitalism and the culture of aesthetics created alienation and feelings of worthlessness that contributed to the 16-year-old's suicide. The group said that they used other peoples' property to commemorate and pay homage to their deceased friend. The graffiti usually had overtones of anti-authority sentiments and youth liberation.