— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
“You know, just spending my Saturdays like I always do: standing at my front window, grumbling about those kids molesting my cat.” Seriously, geezer-bro was standing there for quite some time. I was wicked impressed with his inability to enjoy the sun and get rejected by like 7 hella cute girls while nursing off a hangover.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Totally disappointed in the ‘community meeting’ last night. I sat there the entire time expecting some bro in a beanie to leap over the crowd, smack Bevan Dufty in the face with a longboard and proceed to take a massive hit from a pipe because he needed to ‘mellow out.’ But no, it was just 40 or so NIMBY and political geezers talking a lot but accomplishing nothing. “Dunno bout this, dunno about that, but the community is involved.” Sweet gramps, how can I get involved? “We dunno yet, email us or something.” Literally. That was the conversation. This is your government at work.
Naturally, the meeting wasn’t just about the renovation. No, we had to hear about every little complaint about the park in general.
“Oh hipsters,” cackled some white-haired lady when talking about how there are 40ozs and blunts in her designated off-leash area.
“There’s too much noise,” said some guy who insisted on telling us, repeatedly, that he has lived next door to the park for 32 years.
“GRAFFITI!!!” barked everyone over the age of fun.
The police implored the neighbors to watch over the park and call the police if anything suspicious occurs or people stay in the park beyond some arbitrarily defined park closure hour.
My Mission District
The other day, I had the pleasure of watching some chick get stabbed in the face on my street. Crack, whores, shootings, muggings and other various, you know, real crimes are not a rare occurrence on my side of Mission Street. Yet, these legacy residents are so wrapped up in their goal of forming a permanent storm cloud over the park that they believe bothering the police about someone spray painting a bathroom or drinking a beer at 10:05pm is a top police priority. The worst part? No one was there to tell them they are wrong.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Oh NIMBY neighbors. Look, I can totally appreciate how much it sucks to have to clean up a mess you didn’t make. For example, someone takes a fat shit on my front steps once a month. But, you know, I made a choice to live in a city and, more specifically, a neighborhood not known for being suburbs-meets-city livin’. Sometimes people lack an understanding of the street art code of conduct. Mourn, repaint, and move on.
From the Safe Clean Green mailing list:
New landscaping at 18th & Dolores gets defaced
For those of us who were involved in making happen or have been appreciating the new landscaping at the corner of 18th and Dolores (Thank you Rec&Park for getting it done!), it was upsetting to learn that last Saturday night three taggers defaced it with their black, red and white “urine spots.” (let’s call this crap what it is!)
PURE VANDALISM!
Removing the graffiti correctly, i.e., “seamlessly,” is no simple task on surfaces like this (stained pressure-treated wood). The boneheads who did this perhaps didn’t realize—or more likely, didn’t care—that what took them all of a minute each to do may take 2-3 hours for someone else to undo.
In my dreams I imagined an enlightened judge sentencing each one to being chained to the adjacent lamp post for a day, forced to wear a breadboard announcing I’M THE BONEHEAD WHO DID THIS, then after each has had their day in the limelight, have them all come together and remove all trace of their handiwork. It was a most satisfying dream. And then I woke up …