Neighborhood activism
My part of Midtown is a neighborhood "in transition," as they like to say.
There's a lot of nice, expensive townhouse development. And a few blocks away, there is "affordable housing" of the sort where dead bodies turn up.
Anyway, graffiti is an ongoing problem here, and despite our publicity-craving Mayor appearing on KHOU-11 all the time telling us his latest greatest initiative will get graffiti under control, it never gets under control. There simply isn't a commitment from the City of Houston under MayorWhiteChiefHurtt to get it under control, unfortunately. Maybe graffiti isn't a big problem in Mayor White's neighborhood or in Chief Hurtt's neighborhood in Phoenix, where he spends lots of time.
My experiences with 311 trying to get graffiti handled in this neighborhood have just been comical. I don't think it's the fault of 311 (not totally, anyway), because Jeannie Holmes has stepped in and tried her best to help me. Rather, I think graffiti abatement is mainly just PR, and that nobody really knows what's going on. So nothing gets done. My most recent complaint about graffiti on city traffic signals in the neighborhood goes back many weeks. Ms. Holmes told me on Friday that there was going to be a meeting, and city officials hoped by the end of NEXT week to decide who was supposed to handle graffiti abatement on traffic signals. This is why I say there is no commitment from the City of Houston under the White Administration to get graffiti under control.
Inspired by a guy in the Heights that Tom Manning wrote about for the Chronicle, I stopped at Sears earlier today and bought a clearance gallon of gray exterior deck/metal flat paint and some throwaway brushes for under $10 total. I painted over a number of graffiti spots in the neighborhood this afternoon, without waiting for anyone's permission or the city to have several committee meetings or for Mayor White to call KHOU to come film him looking like he cares.
It felt good. And it looks a hell of a lot better now.
I'm sure I'll get to repeat my efforts every weekend for a while, but I can handle that. Unless one of the little b@stards shoots me, I guess.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/13/06 13:00 | Houston | Technorati
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Very cool, Kevin. I like it. Reminds me of the guys who go around yanking bandit signs out of the ground.
A question, though... You did this "without permission"? Did you do any private property, or just the traffic signals you refer to here? That's not clear from your post.
Here's an idea. Why not organize a Blogger Graffiti Abatement Weekend, in which Houston's blogospherics hit the streets with gray paint and grim resolve?
Sure seems more productive than spending the day taking pictures of cars not hitting trains. And it would certainly raise the profile of the problem. And maybe even help unite the fractured Houston blogging community.
Who knows, you might even get my geeky self out there, too.
Posted by dwight silverman @ 17:54 on 08/13/06
Ah, I did traffic signals, two CoH metal utility boxes that had been tagged, and a couple of places I could reach from the sidewalk whose ownership wasn't certain to me (seemingly utility-related, but not positive).
The main eyesore (an abandoned private property slated for demolition/redevelopment) was finally taken care of by the private owner, but I may try to get their permission simply to re-paint when it's retagged (because it will be). The guy in the Heights has the right approach in that regard, I think.
I hope to hear back from Ms Holmes at 311 on Monday, and I plan on talking to someone in HPD/Graffiti Abatement about getting the same permission as the Heights guy to take these things on. I was so sick of seeing the stuff that I just couldn't wait any longer today!
On a blogger graffiti abatement day... that could be kind of cool, although I don't know if it would make for a good social event. My notion on graffit abatement is that it is pretty neighborhood specific, and needs some vigilance. If it's just a one-shot deal, you can certainly improve the visual blight temporarily, but the taggers WILL come back eventually, and so you have to be prepared to go repaint when they do. Still, there might be some parts of town that could benefit from a group abatement effort, because a one-time cleanup of the visual blight at least improves things for a while. I'll see if there might be any such opportunities when I talk to someone at HPD.
Posted by Kevin @ 20:29 on 08/13/06
We have the same problems near our house, though most tags are on private property (business, not residences... taggers seem to respect people's homes, for some reason). We do have the utility box thing, although here in Montrose, they're often adorned with art ... posters, woodcuts, silkscreens, etc. Probably HSPVA kids. I think some are cool; but how different is that from tagging? I dunno. Visually, it's certainly more appealing. And fits with the neighborhood, though it's still technically a defacing.
I like the approach that's taken in Venice Beach in Calif., where the city has set up a huge wall along the beach and invited grafitti artists to tag that area. It appears to have cut down on the tagging in the area around it; when I was there about a year ago, there was almost no graffiti there, but plenty of cool street art on this wall.
Posted by dwight silverman @ 20:46 on 08/13/06
There's an auto parts store that is just down the street from the area I cleaned up this weekend, and the business apparently has allowed taggers to decorate the walls. I should get some photos and post them on flickr. It looks pretty good, actually. I wish they'd go do their work there and leave the other stuff alone!
Posted by Kevin @ 20:53 on 08/13/06
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