Guerrilla Needlecraft: The Secret Life of an Antenna Tagger

Late at night, after my neighbor’s lights are out, I troll the streets armed only with a handful of fabric or crocheted yarn looking for a likely vehicle —  one that still has a radio antenna. I (carefully)slip one of my exclusive, hand-wrought, goofy sleeves over the aerial and run home giggling like a loon.

My name is Flowerbomba and I’m a suburban antenna tagger. (All us fabric guerillas use an alias.)

http://www.projo.com/home/content/lh_yarnbombing_02-14-10_RRDT6NG_v7.180eea0.html

What in Sam Hill has come over me? Why is a respectable law-abiding woman spending time making objects like this and slipping them on unknown cars and SUVs while ‘Villians are drifting off to whatever late night show peeps are watching these days?

Well, it’s cheap. Like most knitters, crocheters and seamstresses, I have a boatload of weird ends of yarn, fabric scraps in acreage sufficient to mop up a major environmental disaster, stray buttons and a dozen fabric origami flowers and yoyos crowding the sewing basket.

It keeps me cheerful, and my hands always itch for a small, brainless, soothing project to keep them busy, like crocheting a few rows with fuzzy white yarn. and then hand sewing them into a tube. Um, and then decorating it with found trims.

I had a design breakthrough today! Check out the shocking pink dealio with little yoyos that’ll flutter in the wind:

Today’s other only decorated sleeve is the pink floral topped by a Japanese fabric flower and a button. I’ll dress up a couple of the others and leave the rest plain — they’ll slip into my purse for daylight wrapping, at the library parking lot perhaps, or the Police Station. I did see one minivan pull out of the grocery store with my calico tag still in place.

(Note: Please don’t call them Car Condoms — grrrrr! — or comment on their phallic shape. If antennas were pyramidal,the covers would be too. )

Then there’s the HeeHee Rush Factor — it’s the same adrenaline high of soaping someone’s windows or slapping a Kick Me sign on a fellow third-grader’s back with none of the malevolence or meanness. For the first time in my life I understand the motives of those middle-class arty teens with spray paint.

I’m a little afraid of what form of self-expression I’ll take up next. I wish I were young enough to find a road work job that would pay huge overtime and root out any of my mental moonbeams from sheer fatigue. Until then, remember my nom do guerre: that’s Flowerbomba, Homies!