Saw a tweet today from the SFDPW about their Graffiti Watch neighborhood program. Since graffiti is one of my pet peeves, my interest was piqued.
The idea is that an individual, corporation, merchant group or neighborhood group adopts a minimum area of four blocks in the neighborhood to monitor for graffiti vandalism. After a short, 2-hour training course, program members are then enabled to remove graffiti from public property such as utility poles, mailboxes, trash receptacles and other street furniture. In return, DPW provides the tools.
After completing training, you’re sent home with all the tools you need for graffiti abatement:
As a Graffiti Watch volunteer, you will receive paint to match the public property in your adopted area, graffiti remover for signs, paint brushes and buckets, paint scrapers, wet paint signs, dust masks, safety glasses, and other items. You will also receive a Graffiti Watch safety vest to identify you as a volunteer. If you want to organize a community cleanup, DPW will help you plan the cleanup and provide additional supplies.
Of course you can’t just run around painting and blasting graffiti off of private homes and businesses – that still needs to be reported to 311. But if the home or business owner agrees to your offer of help, you can do it for them.
The next 2-hour training for the Graffiti Watch program is on Saturday, January 29th. To sign up, send an email to the program coordinator at greg.crump@sfdpw.org indicating your interest. For more info on the program, visit the SFDPW Graffiti Watch website.
And if you do your job well, you may just get a mayoral appointment like this self-made graffiti vigilante.
Sarah B.
Wow, talk about “crowdsourcing”. Was this one of Mar’s ideas, too?
How about the biggest eyesore of all? Let’s actually get people to throw their trash in a trash receptacle instead of on the ground for it to get blown down the street creating an eyesore or get blown to a storm drain causing it to back up.
Bravo to all who clean up graffiti, whether as part of the SFDPW programs or on their own. Take action — you can do it. If one person in 100 cleaned up one tag a week, the city would be completely free of graffiti. Don’t be shy — go for it.