I admire street art more than almost any other kind of art. The masterpieces I have seen in some random alley rivals the best pieces in museums, certainly in a modern art museum where something like a banana is taped to a wall and sold for over 100,000 dollars.

I once hired a guy to make a piece for me. It wasn't even expensive. Here is the "play-by-play."

First off (and I don't have a picture for this) he showed me a sketch concept, which is looking at in the photo. The first draft was too unreadable so he redid it for me.

We used to have a giant mural on the wall there, so when he first got started I was a little worried because I am completely unfamiliar with the process. I knew that if i ended up hating it I could just paint over it later.

He got the outlines done and then took a break. It was a really hot day and you can't have a fan on someone who is working with spray paint. I admired his resolve, that is for sure.

We start filling in the color at this point. I was still a bit nervous by now because again, i am not familiar with the process. I congratulated him at his excellence but I was not impressed yet.

Moving up to the second floor It is starting to look like something I appreciate. At this point dude has been working all day and we ended up calling it quits for the night so that we could air the place out a bit.

Start of day two I am really starting to feel good about this and was happy that I had hired the guy. He just had a little bit more to do before it was complete.

We ended up painting the outside matte black and it really did a lot of the piece. it looked so good in fact that we repainted the entire ground floor over the next year with other artists from around the world. It became quite popular to visit our establishment and perhaps get hired to do some work for us. Normally these artists were very happy to simply have a place to do this without getting arrested.

Normally the exchange was that they would get a place to do their work, free room and board, and I would pay for all the materials.... talk about a sweet deal for me! I was not cheating these folks, they were happy to make this exchange and it was actually the guy who made the first one's idea to have this be the "payment."

he did such a great job that it changed the overall atmosphere and motif of my business for the remaining years that I owned it. I would like to think that it was a major reason in why the value of it increased. It was unique in a way that could not be copied by neighboring, competing businesses that sold essentially the same products that I did.

years later i would end up trying my hand at this on bits of wood that I owned only to discover that graffiti is TOUGH. After seeing it done in person and also trying to have a go at it myself, my appreciation for this art form has increased many times over.

It was a great decision all those years ago. It made me very nervous at first and overall it ended up costing me about $150. As far as my business purchases were concerned, it was probably the best choice I ever made as owner of that place.