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As part of a campaign to eliminate graffiti, the City of San Francisco launched the Clean and Green Truck pilot program in March.
A grant of $15,000 from the city’s Community Challenge Grants Fund was used to paint 15 commercial vehicles “Transformer Green,” which officials hope will deter people from spray-painting them.
But not all truck owners are on board. Some even like the graffiti. What do you think?
Inspired by her father, Mallika Menon ended up in the Mission District pursuing a career in journalism production. Her first impression of the Mission was that the predominant Hispanic community resembles the Indian community back in Delhi. Menon never visited the Mission before, but she knows she will enjoy it.
More by Mallika Menon6 Comments
If it’s a piece (Reyes & Grow Trees) or even a decent throwup (Oister & Grow Trees again), the owner of the truck shouldn’t trip. If it’s shitty tags, then they should approach an artist or put a note up or something that they are interested in some work being done. Painting over it only gives another canvas to bomb. This city needs to embrace graffiti because it’s here whether you like it or not (and I fucking love it),
If I owned a panel truck, I would absolutely approach some graffiti artists and ask them to paint it for me. I recognize a number of the trucks shown here and like them a lot. That said, I can understand that a truck owner might NOT want this on their vehicle, though why the city is paying to paint over it is beyond me, since they don’t pay to paint over it on private buildings.
When done by the likes of Reyes, it is definitely Art on Wheels
I don’t like graffiti, but what strikes me odd is that the City is paying to take graffiti off of trucks, but it requires building owners to themselves pay if graffiti is on their buildings. Is there a principled reason for that difference? Why does the City treat mobile and stationary graffiti so differently in who will pay? I really don’t see a principled reason.
Several cities, including New York, Denver, Chula Vista have gone to system that the City will paint over the graffiti reported on a building after the owner has given permission and released liability.
Chris Gibson in Denver, reports that graffiti on building is cleaned up their much more quickly than in San Francisco. http://twitter.com/#!/Gibson_RubyHill
Here in San Francisco, DPW does a great job in cleaning graffiti reported by twitter to SF311 that is on poles, street furniture, etc, but their process of sending out letters to building owners, waiting, and if nothing happens chasing them for payment, has issues.
Oh, and to the question you asked, like Bug-eyed says, some is good, and some is, as you pointed out, done with permission.
The city has better use for those ducats. Most of the graffiti, and even some of the tags are well done, except for Dan Plasma’s tired crap; man can’t shake a can worth a shit. And JAST should’ve been nabbed, not Girafa.