Graffiti, a “broken windows” indicator about the quality of life in any city, is starting a slow, ugly creep around the Big Apple — with new tags appearing nightly.
In August, The Post noticed three tags that popped up overnight on the electronic road signs along the FDR Drive.
In the Bronx, a red-brick apartment building at 903-905 Summit Ave., visible from the Major Deegan, has become a full-blown sprayer magnet. The tags and pseudo art on its rear base along Sedgwick Avenue expands on a nightly basis.
From the West Side Highway, graffiti can be seen along the Amtrak tracks where fences are torn away as well as on buildings in the West 100s.
While kayaking on the East River, The Post spotted graffiti along the esplanades, under various bridge abutments and high up on railroad trestles — proving the taggers are as daring as they are pernicious, as one misstep could spell doom.
Graffiti arrests in the city rose 4 percent in the first eight months of the year, to 1,080, city statistics show. But despite law enforcement’s best effort, graffiti continues to leave its mark.
The NYPD arrested 3,598 people for graffiti and related crimes in 2013, up slightly from 2012 but down 13 percent from the 4,000-plus levels of 2009 and 2008, city statistics show.
Graffiti-Free NYC, a partnership between the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit, the Economic Development Corp. and the Department of Sanitation, said that between 2008 and November 2011, more than 170 million square feet of surface area had been cleaned. Up to and including this past May, the team had cleaned 82,644 incidents of graffiti.
Despite the efforts, the taggers seem to be winning this latest round.
5 comments:
Ever since 5 Pointz in LIC was closed, I have noticed a lot more graffiti around Queens in particular.
We should "employ" those in the homeless shelters wiping up graffiti graffiti and picking up trash. How badly would they want to stay in the shelters if they have to earn their keep?
If 5 Pointz wasn't destroyed through the efforts of Jimmy Van Bramer and Joe Conley coluding with the Woloff family there would have still been an outlet for artistic graffiti style expression.
"Anonymous said...If 5 Pointz wasn't destroyed through the efforts of Jimmy Van Bramer and Joe Conley coluding with the Woloff family there would have still been an outlet for artistic graffiti style expression."
Graffiti on public or private property without the owner's permission is vandalism, not art. Why don't you donate the use of YOUR home or YOUR apartment walls as an outlet for 'artistic graffiti style expression'?
5 Pointz drawings contained a lot of talent, by permit. The incomprehensible scrawl you typically see is probably done by scoundrels.
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