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 …