An unidentified graffiti buster is roaming the western part of the Mission.
We came across the person’s Twitter account –@DPClean– in which the tweeter has reported what appears to be every tagging the person has come across since April. The tweets go to San Francisco’s 311.
We have yet to get a response from the graffiti hunter, but have tweets in.
Crystal Vann Wallstrom, of Dolores Park Works, said they don’t know who it is but she’s glad someone is taking initiative because graffiti and tagging are big problems in Dolores Park.
She added that they support artistic graffiti, but the ones the buster is reporting don’t appear to be art. Complete collection here.
The operators at SF311 said they don’t know what kind of follow up is done with the reports because they are only in charge of forwarding the reports to the responsible agency.
The graffiti buster’s “grafitweets” date back to April 28. He sends about a dozen a day and reports being effective. In a May 27th tweet the graffiti buster wrote, “I did a lot of grafitweets today and I am seeing real progress.”
His blog post gives an insight for his motivation to report graffiti.
“Graffiti is… the difference between living in one of the best neighborhoods in the most beautiful city in America, and living in a ghetto.
So I am trying to use ease of sending photo messages from a cell phone to make reports of graffiti. I try to concentrate on public graffiti, such as in parks, on mailboxes, public poles etc, because I think it is the City’s job to also try to clean up the graffiti on its property, and it is only going to happen when pushed.”
He said he focuses on troubled spots.
His current areas of focus include: Dolores Park Restrooms, Rec Building, Picnic Tables, Muni bridge, Tool Shed, Shipping Container, 19th Street Entrance, Chronicle and other paper Newsrack Boxes, Mission Street from 17th to 19th, Mission Street from 19th to 21st, 18th Street from Dolores to Mission, 19th Street from Dolores to Mission, 16th Street from Folsom to Bryant, Folsom Street from 19th to 16th and Mission Playground Park.
Argentina 1, Nigeria 0 – Yes, you are right. We changed the headline earlier in the day yesterday. Best, Lydia
Why do you headline with the term vigilante? That sounds to be factually incorrect and critical term for what the story describes. The story does not give any example of Dolores Clean using extra-judicial punishments against taggers. This seems to be a case of using new technology in a open and visible way to try to clean the neighborhood of ugly tags. It is unfair to label that vigilantism. Here is how the wiki describes vigilantism and it does not apply here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilante.
too bad.
What are people’s thoughts on why people damage public property? People just ain’t getting any love and are crying out for attention?