Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Woodhaven's ongoing graffiti battle

From the Queens Courier:

On a recent rainy Saturday afternoon, Ed Wendell stopped the car every few blocks to inspect one of the graffiti-covered mailboxes in his neighborhood.

If untagged, he and fellow Woodhaven Residents Block Association (WRBA) member Alex Blenkinsopp felt it a small victory. If retagged, Wendell rolled down the window, despite the raindrops, and snapped a picture of the graffiti on the box.

Over the past two years, the WRBA has been trying to clean up graffiti in the neighborhood, which is mainly found on mailboxes or fireboxes. In the last few months, members have gone out to repaint them — sometimes to find them retagged a few days or weeks later.

Wendell, president of the WRBA, and members have mapped out the neighborhood into three zones to keep track of common graffiti areas.

They went out to clean up “Zone A” on Saturday, July 14, where Wendell said 44 percent of the mailboxes had been tagged. By day’s end the entire zone — bordered by Park Lane South and Atlantic Avenue — was cleaned, he said. By Tuesday, July 24, however, Wendell said 56 percent of the mailboxes in Zone A were tagged again.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard time works for me. No punishment, why should they stop doing it...

Anonymous said...

You'd think such prolific taggers would be not so hard to catch...

Anonymous said...

Graffiti is not art. It's advertising for gangs who deal drugs. fuck graffiti. I hate it. The people who do it, if you did it on their property, would have you arrested.

Anonymous said...

removing graffiti is a job for sen. tony avella. that was his beginning as a unpaid public servant in Bayside, now look at him $$$$$$ ,and about to make $100,000. a year??

Anonymous said...

Back in the day anyone caught tagging in Woodhaven would have "disappeared" compliments of the Joeys and the Vinnies from Da Family.

Anonymous said...

Look at who has taken over Woodhaven. Unfortunately, Woodhaven is looking more and more like East NY.
Thank your local elected officials and community board.

Anonymous said...

As soon as grafitti pops up,it must be covered.Don't wait for the other guy to do it...............

Anonymous said...

As much as I can't stand vandalism, that mailbox is FUNNY.

Whoever came up with that has a bent mind!

Anonymous said...

"Graffiti is not art. It's advertising for gangs who deal drugs."

It may not be art, but you are misinformed on your second point. For the most part graffiti is punk kids, or older guys who never grew out of it. Dealing drugs has nothing to do with it.