I was heading down 24th, just past the intoxicating smells of George’s Barbeque. A rather handsome beagle pulled a tethered human to the corner for a sniff-n-squirt. I noticed a very official notice taped to the entry gate. It said that Navarda, Donald has been cited for graffiti blight.
It’s a clear violation of Section 80.5 of San Francisco’s Administrative Code, and Navarda, Donald has only 15 days to repair and/or improve or face abatement. Wow. How will Navarda, Donald ever get the word in time, since he lives way up in Sparks, Nevada?
I edged a little further down 24th Street and saw the wall at Cypress and 24th covered with tags. I stepped aside as a mixed-breed German shepherd examined and added to the preexisting puddle. Wow, a blight right here in our neighborhood. Now get me straight on this issue: I love street art. It expresses our neighborhood in ways words simply can’t tell. But these “scribbles,” as Archie my neighbor calls them, don’t do anything much for the street.
We have all seen how this tiny wall gets tagged, tagged and tagged again, until Navarda, Donald abates the wall. What I find curious is that the vandals don’t figure into the remediation. It seems that the victim — Navarda, Donald — takes the hit.
So I asked around a bit. And got the “duh” look followed by, “So what do you want the police to do? Drop everything and scour the neighborhood for spray-can toting scribblers?” Nope, I think, the police really don’t have the time to fool with this crime (applying graffiti, not failure to abate).
From what I have read, the police do take time to examine the scribbles, as they often foretell unfortunate activity. So what’s the domain of the folks who enforce Section 80.5 of the Administrative Code? Well, they aren’t in the criminal enforcement business. What they know and we all understand is that scribbles beget scribbles. So if you allow the mess to go on unabated, it will expand to become real graffiti blight. And nobody wants that, especially Navarda, Donald, who must pay for the abatement.
The wall across Cypress from the blighted wall has been decorated with a mural from one of the Mission’s finest. It has been respected. I wonder why Navarda, Donald hasn’t tried one? Over the years he sure has bought a lot of paint.
So, what do you think? Be practical, now. Remember spray cans are cheap and city resources are slim. And Navarda, Donald lives way up there in Sparks, Nevada. What would you do?
Postscript: It could be that the culprits have been caught. The wall’s been clean for a few days now, and CBS reported that in a graffiti crackdown, dozens were arrested in San Jose.
Photo from this morning, December 18, 2011:
Our building (Mission @ 16th) gets tagged relentlessly (the bad scribble kind) and our new strategy is to just wait for the notice, then paint it on the last possible day. At least that minimizes our cost. It’s usually tagged again within days. We are looking into a mural — unsure if it “respect” is in the tagger’s lexicon.
So that wall is actually kind of joke to me, meaning that yesterday as I walked home with a friend, I was telling him how it always gets tagged up, and they repaint, and it last about five minutes. It got repainted about 2-3 days ago and I bet my friend last night it would be tagged. I was wrong, it was clean. But today it was tagged. I keep thinking to myself, why do these people keep repainting that wall? Everyone in the hood knows the only way to keep the wall clean is a mural. These Cypress alley people need to call up those guys at HOMEY or Precita Eyes and invest in getting a beautiful new mural up there. The graffiti sucks, it’s not pretty when they tag “LNS” or “XIV” up there, but that’s where we live, so lets solve the problem the only way we know how – pay a CBO to involve the youth in painting a beautiful piece of art.
Earlier this year the city of Toronto, Canada declared war on graffiti. Notices were being handed out to small businesses to clean-up graffiti. The costs to clean-up the graffiti ranged from a $100+ to a few thousand dollar. The enforcement was making a ‘victim of a victim’. Through inclusive consultation of all stakeholders including the graffiti community a comprehensive and progressive ‘Graffiti Management Plan’ was passed. A major aspect was it mitigated the financial penalties imposed on innocent property owners.
Stefan great post! For everyone else, here is a link to Stefan’s web page and the link to the Toronto discussion. http://www.streetartshowcase.com/ For me there is a great difference between the design and motivation of “scribbles” and those of murals, spray can art, and other form of street art. As a friend once told me: “What seems like a problem to you is a solution for someone else”. We need to find a way to move from scribbles to art. Thanks again Stefan and I love your webpage.