Brookline Graffiti Removal

The Roof Vandals

So I was walking out of the Brookline Village Starbucks late one afternoon and this is what I saw.

To normal humans, this would be a nice quiet suburban scene. They would not have noticed the top-center of this view:

Yes, up there high above - in a nearly invisible place, were a few large tags. They were dated to 2007. (My camera didn’t show the year clearly marked on the far-right)

Sigh.

While I dream about climbing the roof above Flipside Records, this would never seem worth it.

I am just surprised we have had rooftop vandals in the past several years.

They are a different tribe than the guys below. I have seen only one tag that was both on rooftops and down below.

The good news is that I don’t think we have had any rooftop graffiti in Brookline this past year. I don’t know why.

But I continue to be amazed the lengths people go through to get their tags seen.

Air Conditioner Graffiti

It isn’t common, but some guy from East Boston hit Harvard Street pretty hard last week and carved his tag into three air conditioners. Not sure how to eliminate this rare but very difficult kind of tag. I have some ideas. I will experiment and report back. It’s not that I am doing eliminations here in retirement, I just wanted to add a viable technique to my catalog

Graffiti: The Bow Flies of Abandoned Property

Remember the big fire on Beacon Street? Well, it didn’t take long for graffiti vandals to move in:

What’s funny about the stupid graffiti-is-art proposition is that nothing attracts it like a closed building or business. Just look at 105 Boylston Street - or the other shuttered businesses in Brookline.

Graffiti is like the bow flies on a dead animal. It almost never appears somewhere for a good reason.

A Littell Street I Missed

Littell Street, at the center of this map, is one I had never been on. Yes, I had walked down Alton a lot and Stearns once in a while. But Littell… never. Today, I saw it and said, “Wait a minute….” Then, right before I hit Alton, I saw this awful telephone pole (pictures are two sides of the same pole):

Yipes!

I couldn’t help myself but to get rid of this awful graffiti, using Dark Taupe and Winter Gray. It now looks great.

But what a shame - this graffiti had been there for well over a year, on a very nice street with two interesting inns that I didn’t even know were there! But it is gone now.

As always, I think, “Well, there is no other large ugly graffiti in town now.”

Is there some other street I missed during this past year? Um…… I don’t think so.

So… what now?

Now that I am officially retired, and the Brookline TAB is probably finished having so much fun with the story, people might want to know what I am going to do now. Well, I plan to improve the self-help parts of this site (paint catalog, case studies).

Of course, the current situation in Brookline is not fully resolved! I will help in any way possible from my computer. Such questions are:

• Did Mr. Nugs do the Phop tags? (There have been 410 Phop tags in Brookline in the past 9 months.  So this question is very important.)
• Who is Mr. Fiest? (He has hit Brookline over 100 times in the past year)
• Is Mr. Pink really back in action at full strength?
• Will Mr. Elem extend his awful reign of tags (currently along Storrow Drive) further into Brookline?

These questions need answers.

P.S.  I wanted to apologize to the people on Winslow Street (the northernmost tip of Brookline, and a street few even know about. Heck - it isn’t even labeled on this map). I haven’t been there in months, and there was some damage. I cleaned it all up.

Officially Retiring!

Well, after a year of doing this, it’s time to stop. The police are doing a great job arresting people, and other taggers have seen that Brookline is a place where there is just too much risk of getting caught because of all the patrols and stakeouts.

It has been 18 straight nights in town with no new tags - the longest stretch in at least a year! During that time, I got rid of all the old tags in Brookline I could find. All that is left are tags in alleys, along train tracks, up on several partially-obscured rooftops, and other places that the public doesn’t really see.

I am sure there will be more tags soon enough. But for now, even if not for long, the town is cleaner than it has been in several years.

To all the people in Brookline: you’re welcome!

To all the hecklers online who have made fun of my crusade: your opinions have no meaning to me.

To all the graffiti vandals online who are outraged at this and have promised revenge: The police here have serious skills and have proved they can catch you. They are watching this town, and they have my back too. If you come to Brookline, a town where cops can be seen all over the place, they will arrest you.

Lastly, I will leave you not with an image of graffiti, but of the most prominent town symbol: the Tricentennial Tower in Coolidge Corner. This effort was always about the community. Teddy Applebaum once asked me what the difference was between me and the taggers. I said, “I believe that the public square should represent the values of the community. They believe it should represent only their values.”

Graffiti Photo Archive Removed

I have revoked public access to the online graffiti photo database. It was getting a lot of hits through the world of graffiti websites. I don’t want it to be a place where taggers go to see tags. (Not that any of the tags in Brookline had any artistic value - they didn’t.) Regardless, I only had it up to show proof of how bad the problem was. It will no longer be available.

Tips for the Town of Brookline

I have created a page with tips for the Town of Brookline to help them combat graffiti more effectively. I am not trying to be a jerk. I just think the way they handle graffiti doesn’t work very well.

(Oh - I don’t mean the police - they have been absolutely fantastic. But even they re-thought and changed the way they operated in 2012. That change, led by Sgt. Murphy, made all the difference.)

Link to the page is here.