Phallic Symbols Across City are Catalogued

Bristol's streets outside of the clean and tidy Cabot Circus area are often a riot of graffiti, flyposting and stickering. It's a fantastically interesting fabric of the city – a skin that reveals the great underground of our home city, such as club nights, illegal raves, legal raves, squats, politics left, right and centre, campaign groups, the environment, or just plain doodling. If you want to know what people think in Bristol or get a feel for issues of the day, take a walk through the city streets and look at the largely illicit graffito. Now, a local man has decided to document one particular type of drawing, which links us to the pagan fertility symbols of ancient humans and the preoccupation of many people – namely the penis. Max Bridges tells local alternative newspaper B247, that “I’m attracted to the art form of cock’n’balls over street art because I’m very childish and I’m fascinated with why people (mostly men, but a surprising amount of women) feel the need to draw knobs on everything”. Max says that once you start looking for male genitalia in graffiti, they kind of leap out at you. The new 144-page book, With Knobs On, is believed to be a world-first on the subject. Ninety per cent of the peckers were found in Bristol, with the selection of shafts showcased in full colour.