Graffiti by the Numbers
Posted under: Mayor Daley’s “Graffiti Blasters,” a program started in 1993, promises to remove graffiti from private property within 24 hours of a report. Baking soda combined with high pressure water is used to remove the graffiti, street art or gang-related vandalism. The city has 13 “blast trucks” and 14 paint trucks.
Song: “Freedom’s Truth” by Jamie K
Photos: Flickr Commons
Related Links
Video tribute to Chicago graffiti artist “Sole” | Graffiti with soundtrack by DePaul students |
Flickr gallery of Chicago graffiti |NBC5 gallery of graffiti tagging |
Photo essay on graffiti by TIME | Photos of “permission wall” in Pilsen
———————————————————————————————————–
City struggles to keep up with spread of Graffiti
The Problem – Where Are The Graffiti Blasters?
Since fall 2009, Chicago’s West Side neighborhoods have experienced a sharp uptick in graffiti taggings on the walls and windows of businesses up and down Milwaukee Avenue.
“It’s really bad in the alley,” Andrew Manto, a metal fabricator who works in Wicker Park, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
In February, the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago was tagged with graffiti, as was the “Bean” sculpture in Millennium Park, causing alarm across the city that the problem was getting out of control.
City records show that the Streets and Sanitation Department has had an unusually difficult time keeping up with recent graffiti incidents.
Since October 2009, the department’s “Graffiti Blasters” team has cleaned up 10,000 fewer graffiti incidents than it did during the same period a year earlier.
A spokesman for the department argued that changes in cleanup efforts are cyclical and not related to budget cuts.
“Some years and months, there are more, and some less,” Matt Smith told the Sun-Times. “It fluctuates. Graffiti is also impacted by the weather. I’m not sure it can be analyzed beyond all of these issues.”
But some residents in Wicker Park and Bucktown are skeptical, noting the coincidental timing of the graffiti boom and Chicago’s failed October bid to host the 2016 Olympics.
How We Got Here – Chicago Fights Graffiti
According to the City of Chicago, “Graffiti is vandalism. It scars the community, hurts property values and diminishes our quality of life.”
As much as 35 percent of all property vandalism involves graffiti and graffiti clean up efforts devour millions of dollars from city budgets across the country.
In the early 1990s, the City of Chicago tried to combat graffiti in an aggressive way by staging a two-prong war.
In 1992 the city outlawed the sale of spray paint within city limits and in 1993 Mayor Daley started the Graffiti Blasters program.
As a free service to property owners affected by unsightly graffiti, the city’s Streets and Sanitation department operates 13 trucks armed with high water pressure baking soda blasters that are used to erase taggings and 14 paint trucks that cover graffiti. To request service, please dial 3-1-1.
The program costs more than $6 million annually and over 170,000 taggings are cleaned up each year.
Other Solutions – If You Can’t Rely On The City…
Community leaders on the West Side have become so frustrated with the city’s efforts that they have developed their own graffiti-fighting plans.
The Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a “Graffiti Abatement Program,” which will help business owners replace glass sprayed with acid-laced graffiti and help cover the cost of installing “anti-graffiti film to protect glass from damage.”
The program started taking applications on April 1, 2010. To apply, please contact the WPB Chamber of Commerce at (773) 235-6385 or at info@wickerparkbucktown.com. There are also private companies that specialize in graffiti removal.
Keep America Beautiful suggest 10 steps to preventing graffiti:
1) Educate yourself about how graffiti impacts your community and who is responsible for cleaning it up
2) Report incidents of graffiti
3) Organize people in your community to clean up the mess together in a safe way
4) Paint a mural over graffiti
5) Organize a graffiti awareness campaign
6) Talk to your neighbors about graffiti prevention
7) Adopt a wall or block in your community and make sure it stays free of graffiti
8) Plant a tree near a graffiti-laced wall
9) Install better lighting in poorly-lit areas
10) Volunteer with local clean-up efforts in your community
Related Links
Video tribute to Chicago graffiti artist “Sole” | Graffiti with soundtrack by DePaul students |
Flickr gallery of Chicago graffiti |NBC5 gallery of graffiti tagging |
Photo essay on graffiti by TIME | Photos of “permission wall” in Pilsen
———————————————————————————————————–
Graffiti: What The Experts Are Saying
Source: Flickr Commons
“We take from graffiti that we want to put art in the street, but we want to make people think. Street artists liberate the idea that work needs to be in a gallery…With these art forms the street speaks.”
- Graffiti artist “The Viking” in TimeOut Chicago
“The goal is to get it off walls and get it out of sight. We don’t want it to serve as inspiration or an invitation for other taggers to do the same thing.”
- Paula Barrington, executive director of the Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, in the Chicago Sun-Times
“With the gangs you’re out there protecting your neighborhood and retaliating against other crews. But the graffiti guys were out there to do their artistic talent, to do pieces. Graffiti crews would retaliate just by drawing. They wouldn’t fight hand in hand; they would fight by doing better painting.”
- Graffiti artist “Lemonhead Lewy” in the Windy Citizen
“In many ways, graffiti saves people’s lives. It saves you from whatever you could have done. I could be doing 50 years in prison for something, but painting gave me an opportunity to be an artist. It gave me something in my life that was positive.”
- Graffiti artist “Tsel” in the Windy Citizen
“I get it – the Art Institute is the center of Chicago’s art community, right? But I don’t think defacing the Modern Wing’s wall was what anyone had in mind, and now the wall will never be the same. Plus, it’s a shame someone was actually bold enough to do this to a much-loved institution that is usually more than willing to serve as an inspiring, creative center for Chicagoans and visitors alike. I don’t care how much you don’t like the steep admission price – tagging the museum just isn’t being a good sport.”
- Ginny Berg in Chicago Now
“When you put a gallery show together it’s only going to attract a certain crowd. If I paint a billboard that you can see from I-94, Amtrak and Damen, it’s going to hit a lot more people than just some college hipsters or some 40-year-old art collectors.”
- Graffiti artist “Snacki” in The New York Times
“On the side of graf[fiti] kids that have no understanding of art history, just to be honest with you, they have to understand the museum, as an institution, and if they’re even interested in working within it. They need to know the language of the museum, and work within [the museum's] constructs . . . an artist interested in showing in the museum and dealing with the museum, but who wants to hang on to a piece of graffiti culture, [has] to know both. If someone doesn’t understand the museum or its art, you can’t just dismiss it and be like, ‘That’s so wack, I don’t understand that.’ That’s like not learning a language even though you want to communicate with someone. You have to understand both languages.”
- Artist Mario Ybarra, Jr., in ArtSlant Chicago
Related Links
Video tribute to Chicago graffiti artist “Sole” | Graffiti with soundtrack by DePaul students |
Flickr gallery of Chicago graffiti |NBC5 gallery of graffiti tagging |
Photo essay on graffiti by TIME | Photos of “permission wall” in Pilsen
———————————————————————————————————–
Graffiti in the News: A timeline of recent events
Related Links
Video tribute to Chicago graffiti artist “Sole” | Graffiti with soundtrack by DePaul students |
Flickr gallery of Chicago graffiti |NBC5 gallery of graffiti tagging |
Photo essay on graffiti by TIME | Photos of “permission wall” in Pilsen
———————————————————————————————————–
Spot the Graffiti: An interactive map
Below is a map of places graffiti has been found in the city of Chicago, where there has been debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or vandalism.
Click on each marker to learn more about the graffiti at that location.
Red markers indicate work that still exists.
Blue markers indicate work that was destroyed.
Purple markers indicate work that’s state is unknown.
View Graffiti in Chicago in a larger map
Related Links
Video tribute to Chicago graffiti artist “Sole” | Graffiti with soundtrack by DePaul students |
Flickr gallery of Chicago graffiti |NBC5 gallery of graffiti tagging |
Photo essay on graffiti by TIME | Photos of “permission wall” in Pilsen
———————————————————————————————————–
