Kansas City Urban Explorers

Tagging a spot, whether it's a small sharpie tag or something larger with spray paint can be tempting to do. It's always been a habit of mankind to leave their mark; it leaves behind a beacon to other travelers, showing them all of those who have come before them. This can also be fun to see in spots that stick around for years; seeing recognizable names who have come and gone over the years. Because of this, tagging tends to be a consistent grey area in our hobby.

In urban exploring, it's best to take only photos and leave only footprints as it's what separates us from vandals. If you absolutely HAVE TO LEAVE A TAG, here are some basic guidelines to follow to avoid causing drama in our community. As always, respect the ethics of any communities you may visit outside of KC, as they tend to treat these things differently than we do. Some communities might even have dedicated spaces for you to do your thing at and other fellow artists for you to link with so check with the local community members!

Use common sense:
If a spot is brand new, pristine, or otherwise untouched, it's best to just leave it alone. Don’t be that guy who paints/tags up a clean spot. Don’t tag up spots that have owners or workers that come through; even if that particular section of the spot is “inactive”. Likewise, don’t invite friends who prioritize tagging over preserving.

Keep it discreet:
In buildings, you may discover small tags done with sharpie, chalk, or dry erase markers in hidden or out-of-sight areas. This has always been a gray area and it's generally acceptable within reason. Think chalkboards and whiteboards, or tucked away closets or areas; places that won’t get noticed by any people passing through. Obvious tags, especially with dates, get spots sealed. Don't be that guy.

Keep the spray paint to the concrete drains and tucked away public infrastructure:
If you absolutely have to use spray paint, save it for the concrete drains or infrastructure already full of graffiti. We have miles and miles of boring non-historic concrete drains that are begging for your artistic touch! A lot of us want to watch the ruins decay naturally; don’t ruin the ruins and don’t be a dick to private property owners!

Don’t tag the brick/stone:
This is kinda an extension of the above. KC has a lot of incredible, historic drains and sewers built by hand with brick and stone; tagging these takes away from the art and care that went into building those tunnels.

Respect who you’re with:
Our primary purpose is low impact exploring; don’t bust out the paints or start tagging things while you're exploring with people who aren’t comfortable with you doing that.

Use handles with caution:
If you tag a handle or name, be mindful that it doesn’t link back to personal info, a social media account, or make the spot easier to find for outsiders.

Most importantly: KEEP IT CLASSY!
If you’re going to leave a tag, make it thoughtful. Don’t leave slurs, hate symbols, edgy try-hard stuff, slander, or rage-bait. We have zero tolerance for that kind of behavior in KCUE.

Again, if you have any questions or if any particular ethic isn’t clear, reach out to any of the core members to ask!

To give you a better visual idea of what is considered "acceptable" for tagging in KCUE, and why tagging can actually hurt our hobby, we've done some AI recreations of real world examples. The main goal of this thread to guide you on how to not cause drama within the community

Common Sense and Discretion:
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Being discreet and using common sense are probably the most important aspects to consider. We don't want to alert anyone that we were in their building; we want to be able to keep exploring spots into the future!

Don't be these guys:
Imagine this: Your friend finds an amazing bank vault in the basement of a decaying building that still has an active business on the 3rd floor. Your friend brings some people who share it beyond your crew, resulting in people visiting and tagging it up. After it was tagged up, maintenance workers noticed the fresh tags and worked with the building owner to install cameras and motion sensors to catch the vandals. This is a real scenario; within a month, a super sick vault was inaccessible and trashed. Wouldn't you be frustrated if it were ruined before you were able to check it out?

This also applies to exterior tags:
The above building is completely abandoned. From the outside, it might be difficult to tell that the building lays empty until one day:
Someone puts a massive spray paint tag on the side of the building. Any person who passes by is now aware that the building must be open to some degree for someone to be able to paint there.

So when is it okay to paint in the buildings?:
Our community avoids spray painting/painting in spots for the simple fact that spray paint screams, "SOMEONES BEEN IN HERE". Even if a spot is blown out or destroyed, spray paint can drastically take away from the beauty of natural decay.

Lets use an abandoned school as an example. Look at this beautiful abandoned theater stage!!! How incredible! Wow! Now it looks like shit! Don't be those guys.

There is leeway for spots that are already well know tagging spots. If you've been around long enough to remember Weld, a factory in the West Bottoms, it was a pretty well known tagging spot. Those types of spots are generally not going to piss off members of the urbex community if you do your spray painting there.

Gray Area: (I know this isn't gray, apparently it isn't a color option lol)
Our community tends to be more progressive than most when it comes to certain types of tags. This was previously an unspoken rule, but some people had a hard time understanding why certain things were okay and others weren't. When our community leaves tags, we make sure they are covertly placed and small. Our goal is to not alert property owners or caretakers, ruin peoples photos, and encourage people to actually explore a building to find the "sign in" board/wall/sheet. We avoid tagging in-active or active spots to avoid alerting people that we were there.
Why is this in a gray area? There are a few reasons for this:
1. The building is clearly abandoned/decayed.
2. The tags are done in a discreet area of the building, tucked away in a room.
3. The tags are preferably done with non-destructive elements (chalk).
4. The tags are not destroying historic elements.
5. The tags are undated. If someone important were to find/notice the tags, they might shrug them off as being old if they are left undated.

You might also notice in this example that the natural decay of the building is now disturbed; use your best judgement before you put the chalk to the board. Remember, buildings can look "bando" but can be still cared for by caretakers/owners so use common sense on whether leaving a trace is appropriate.

This is okay: If this room was full of graffiti, leaving chalk tags is 100% not a problem. If a building were to be saved from demolition, our hope is that the historic pieces of a building will be restored. If they are damaged beyond repair with spray paint, history could be lost. This goes against our primary objective to preserve.
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The Most Ideal Places to Paint:
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Since we want to avoid tagging up our active and bando locations, we recommend you direct your energy to the city's public infrastructure. Public infrastructure can be the most ideal place for you to unleash your creative side. In fact, we especially encourage it in the miles of boring concrete drains and spillways.

For example: These are real world examples of what graffiti art collaborating with urbex could be; colorful/adding to a space. It should be fun and interesting! Go wild! Make cool patterns, use glow-in-the-dark paint! Concrete drains are so much cooler with a rainbow explosion of colors.

Suck at painting? Stencils are a great way to go and are easy to make! Here is an example of a cryptographic puzzle a member made in a drain. Here are some other (generated) ideas on how you could spruce up a drain space: We're hoping to encourage more drain painting by hosting events in the future. We know that tagging and exploring can sometimes overlap so we're wanting to try finding a middle ground that folks can be happy with.

Absolutely DO NOT do this though: This isn't really a problem right now (we'd assume because brick is often slippery and carrying sewage lol), but its good to know in case you didn't already. Don't tag up the brick and stone sewers and drains. These spaces are full of incredible craftsmanship and are often very very old. Again, don't destroy history.

Follow Your Local Tagging Culture Ethics/Codes:
I will admit that I don't know a whole lot about our local tagging scene. But like explorers, taggers generally follow their own set of rules and ethics when it comes to their hobby. I've noted some of the more popular tagging ethics below:

• Respect Others Work: Don't go over somebody else's piece (especially a piece someone who passed away did).
• Tag over throw-ups: Generally you can paint large murals over throw-ups, but not the other way around.
• Don't tag over a piece better than yours, especially if it looks new.
• Don't tag small businesses, peoples homes, or places with cultural or memorial significance.
• Keep it classy, not trashy: Colorful, stylized pieces are often better for a space than a single color crappy doodle.
• Practice in more private spots when you're first starting out.
• Don't be a dick.

We hope this better explains whats okay and whats not; if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!