Nazis invade Forest Park

QNS

Queens elected officials are expressing outrage after swastikas were discovered in Forest Park on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 15.

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force was notified after a 65-year-old man came across the two swastikas that were spray-painted on tree stumps inside the park in the vicinity of Park Lane South between Myrtle Avenue and Freedom Drive in Richmond Hill, within the confines of the 102nd Precinct.

“Sadly, antisemitism has struck again in Queens, this time at Forest Park. Hatred against Jews is a growing issue and we cannot allow this to keep happening,” Councilwoman Lynn Schulman said. “When a constituent called this to our attention, we immediately notified the NYPD and I am thankful to the 102nd Precinct for their immediate response.”

Rockaway boardwalk stained with graffiti

 

 CBS New York

 Vandals went wild with spray paint over the weekend on a large section of the Rockaway boardwalk, and that had residents demanding an immediate cleanup.

On Wednesday, city crews were out in force with power washers, and as CBS2's Carolyn Gusoff reported, they're promising a swift response to graffiti on the newly built boardwalk.

Far Rockaway resident Michael Blomquist sees the Rockaway boardwalk as his escape to natural beauty, but on Saturday he came upon gasp-worthy ugliness.

"I've never seen that much graffiti in one place, and this is such an important place for us, for the community," Blomquist said.

He and others took to social media to share a community outcry -- to not let what happened stand as the new normal on a five-mile boardwalk just rebuilt after Superstorm Sandy.

Graffiti tags, at least 100 of them, with profanity, were sprayed across the entire width of the concrete boardwalk, from Beach 54th Street to 55th Street.

"Someone else will say, 'That's a good idea,' and every block will be marked up like that," Far Rockaway resident Methun Singh said. "They hurt the whole family, the neighborhood, everybody who lives here."

"I don't know what they were thinking. Some people just don't like to see things looking nice," resident Helen Jackson added.

City officials say this was a job for a special detail, and on Wednesday morning sent in the big guns -- its borough-wide graffiti removal squad.

"This was a whole block of the boardwalk with spray paint, so it's that much more visible, that much more obnoxious, and that much more problematic and troublesome," NYC Parks administrator Eric Peterson said.

The quick and complete cleanup sends the message that graffiti will not be tolerated.

"If you know your work is going to be erased immediately, hopefully you'll be less inclined to do the graffiti and damage the park,"  Peterson said.

I dream of Biggie

A mural for legendary late rapper Notorious B.I.G. just went up in Maspeth. Actually an ad for Amazon commemorating his 50th birthday just went up which depicts Biggie as a spirit emitting from a bunch of flowers. Or maybe that's insecticide. Curious why he would be depicted this way.

  

But I think I know where this gentrifier artist got her inspiration from...

High End Ghetto Manhattan

Northwest Queens graffiti vandal caught

  

NY Post

 Looks like the letter “A” now stands for “arrest.”

A graffiti vandal who allegedly scrawled crudely drawn letter “A’s” on the side of nearly two dozen cars in Queens was busted Friday, cops said.

Herberto Torres, 57, who has 43 prior arrests, was hit with 46 counts of making graffiti and criminal mischief after being arrested at 12:15 a.m. Friday, cops said. 

He allegedly spray-painted multiple cars with the letter “A” — which is a nickname he goes by, according to authorities and police sources. 

The alleged graffiti bandit was tracked to an auto body shop where he worked, because a customer’s vehicle was used in the crimes, sources said.

After his arrest, he was let free on a desk appearance ticket, sources said.

Cops tallied 65 graffiti incidents dating back to late March — and at this point, Torres has been charged with 46 of them, police said. The remaining incidents are under investigation.

On March 26, on 35th Street between 31st Avenue and Broadway, 20 vehicles were vandalized between 8:30 and 10:11 a.m., police said.

Then on May 18, between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m., 20 more vehicles were targeted on 27th Street between 23rd Avenue and Ditmars Boulevard, police said. 

The next day, 17 vehicles were graffitied on 33rd Street between 23rd Avenue and Ditmars Boulevard between 9 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., authorities said.

The final spree came on May 22, when eight vehicles were spray-painted on 32nd Street between 34th Avenue and Broadway between 7:35 a.m. and 10 a.m., cops said. 

Back in October, Torres was busted for allegedly tagging more than 50 cars in Jackson Heights with spray paint spelling out “BLM” or “AOC,” police said.

The leadership of Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio gets aptly honored with mural on Brooklyn Street

 

 

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5 Pointz hits the jackpot, judge rules against Wolkoff

Artnet
 
In a sweeping 32-page decision eviscerating the legal arguments of a disgruntled Queens real estate developer, a US Appeals Court affirmed the rights and monetary damages awarded to a group of graffiti artists whose works were destroyed without warning or consent in 2013.

The artists sued the developer, Gerald Wolkoff, in 2013 for violating their rights after he whitewashed their work at the famous 5Pointz graffiti art mecca in New York to make way for condos. A jury ruled in favor of the artists in November 2017, but it was up to a judge to determine the extent of the damages.

In February 2018, Brooklyn Supreme Court judge Frederick Block awarded the artists a total $6.75 million in a landmark decision. The sum included $150,000—the maximum legal penalty—for each of the 45 destroyed works at the center of the case.

The trial was a key test of the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), which grants visual artists certain “moral rights” for their work. Previous VARA cases rarely made it to trial, and were instead settled privately.

But the act, which was added to copyright laws in 1990, disallows the modification of works in ways that could be considered harmful to artists’ reputations, and grants protections to artworks deemed to be of “recognized stature.”

In his appeal, Wolkoff challenged practically every aspect of the decision by Judge Block, from the amount of the award, to the suggestion that the graffiti murals at 5Pointz merited protection under the “recognized stature” clause.

But Wolkoff was rebuffed on all points in the latest ruling, and the court took the additionally extraordinary step of citing his own lawyers against him. “Wolkoff’s own expert acknowledged that temporary artwork can achieve recognized stature,” according to the decision.

The ruling also took Wolkoff to task for making misrepresentations about how his business would have been harmed if he did not move to immediately whitewash the works. In his arguments, Wolkoff claimed that certain tax credits available to him would have expired if he did not move quickly to paint over the works.

Yet he did not even have a demolition permit for the building when he began his campaign to cover up the murals.

Congratulations 5 Pointz, you all earned every penny from this disingenuous arrogant jerk.

Bigoted graffiti found on sidewalks, fences and trees in Lindenwood

 

NY Post


A hateful vandal scrawled “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” in front of a Queens home and defaced nearby trees and fences with other profane messages, police said Friday.
The spray-painted graffiti, written in black and underlined with red, was discovered on the sidewalk in front of a home on 151st Avenue near 81st Street in the neighborhood of Lindenwood on Thanksgiving morning, cops said.
Found on nearby trees were spray-painted messages reading “F–K WHITE,” and simply, “F–K,” police and witnesses told The Post.
The messages were discovered at around 4 a.m. and reported to police at around 10 a.m., according to authorities.
Nearby fences were also found defaced with graffiti that read: “I NEED P—Y ASAP,” and “ONE DAY I WILL COME BACK TO THIS AND SEE HOW SUCCESSFUL I AM!”
“It’s not safe. We’re afraid,” said Lina Bachour, 38, who lives at the home where the “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” graffiti was scrawled in front of.
It was not yet clear if Bachour or anyone else was specifically targeted.
Another neighbor, Barry Rachnowitz, 70, said that his part of his fence was spray-painted in red graffiti.
“This is horrible,” he said. “There are no words to share my disgust right now. It is definitely a hate-crime, especially what they wrote on the [sidewalk].”
Rachowitz added: “I can’t understand how someone can have so much hate in their heart towards a stranger … Hopefully the person will be caught and punished.”
Resident Anthony Carecchia, 20, said the vandalism was “very surprising to see.”
“You don’t expect something like this in this neighborhood,” he said, noting, “It’s a pretty diverse neighborhood, so I’m really surprised.”

Bigoted graffiti found on Rockaway Beach resort club

New York Times

On the Friday evening before the final big weekend of summer, members of one of New York’s last private beach clubs, the Silver Gull in Queens, received an ominous email.

The club’s playground would be closed, the manager wrote, “due to the recent and increasing incidence of vandalism from within the club.”

Word soon spread that the playground had been covered with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti. “Heil Hitler” was scrawled in large block letters. White walls were smeared with a red swastika and racial slurs targeting black people. The words “gas chamber” were painted on a door, according to photos shared with The New York Times.

 The graffiti at the club, which sits on federal seashore, was quickly painted over by the management, according to a club member, and the police were called.

Sgt. Richard Firrito, a spokesman for the United States Park Police in New York, said the incident was being investigated as a bias crime.

Investigators believe a group broke into a shed that the club uses for arts programs on Friday and vandalized the interior. The vandals then proceeded to “trash the room,” Sergeant Firrito said. He first said the incident appeared to have happened after the beach club had closed for the day, but later clarified that it apparently had occurred during opening hours.

Harold Bretstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who has been a member of the oceanfront club for about 20 years, said the incident hurt.

“You can gloss it over. You can talk about it being a prank,” Mr. Bretstein said. “But it’s much more than a prank, especially in terms of the times we’re living in when you’re seeing a rise in anti-Semitism everywhere.”

 This is where the classic movie The Flamingo Kid was filmed 35 years ago.

 

Kew Gardens LIRR Station has an urban blight street art display.

Hi Crappy,thought you'd like to see the view people get of Kew Gardens from the LIRR.This has been like this for years.

Katz finally working on Jamaica cleanup

Photo from Cleanup Jamaica Queens

From AM-NY:

A new pilot program aimed at cleaning up Jamaica’s streets will also benefit formerly homeless people looking to build job skills.

Borough President Melinda Katz unveiled the “Jamaica Together: A Neighborhood Cleaning Effort” program on Tuesday, announcing a six-month partnership with the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless (ACE) as well as other community stakeholders.

The initiative will lean on ACE-paid workers to clean up and beautify a section of Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, between Tuskegee Airmen Way and 109th Avenue, according to Kat’s office. ACE, a non-profit organization, works with recovering homeless people in the city by providing support services and helping them build key skills that will enable them to obtain and maintain a job.

“Jamaica is one of our borough’s core neighborhoods and it is critically important that we do all we can to make it a fantastic place to live, work and visit,” Katz said. “This program is just one part of our overall effort to revitalize Jamaica and maximize its potential as a residential and commercial hub.”

Each weekday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a two-person crew will go out along Guy R. Brewer Boulevard to clean the sidewalks and tree pits and remove unauthorized graffiti. The workers will be overseen by a supervisor from ACE, per Katz’s office.

Claremont Terrace apartment house has become a zombie

From the Queens Chronicle:

Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) said Dr. John Ko promised him last February that long-delayed work at 1 Claremont Terrace in Elmhurst would be done in one year.

Thirteen months have passed, and the lawmaker says the unfinished, graffiti-covered apartment building abutting the Long Island Rail Road tracks is still in the same unsightly condition.

“It’s become a zombie apartment building. It’s just horrible,” Dromm told the Chronicle on Monday. “Our patience has come to an end.”

The property the building sits on is one of the more historic ones in Elmhurst, as Samuel Lord — the co-founder of Lord & Taylor, the oldest department store in America — purchased the site in 1840, eventually building homes for his four daughters there.

But 12 years ago, the final, decaying Lord home was demolished and construction began on the eight-story building.

But once the shell of it was completed, work seemingly came to a halt.

And in the years since, Dromm said, the site has become an on-again, off-again homeless encampment — “they had tents and everything” — and a magnet for graffiti vandals.

Jury sides with 5 Pointz

From Curbed:

A jury has concluded that 5 Pointz developer Jerry Wolkoff violated the law when he whitewashed that buildings without warning, erasing graffiti from dozens of artists. The jury’s findings will serve as a recommendation to the lawsuit’s presiding judge, who will then render a final verdict, reports the New York Times.

“The jury sided strongly with the rights of the artists. This is a clear message from the people that the whitewashing of the buildings by its owner was a clear and willful act,” said lawyer Eric Baum, who represents the artists that filed the suit.

The judge will ultimately determine the repercussions of Wolkoff’s actions, which could include making him pay the artists for destroying their artwork.

5Pointz heading to court

From the NY Times:

This is no vandalism case in a criminal courthouse, but rather a federal lawsuit filed in 2013 by the 23 artists who painted regularly at 5Pointz, against its owner, Jerry Wolkoff, who ordered the artwork destroyed.

The artists scored an incremental legal victory on March 31 when Judge Frederic Block of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled that their case could have a jury trial.

The plaintiffs hope it could become a landmark case. Celebrity artists like Banksy have gained prominence in recent years, and street art — whether spray painted, stenciled or wheat-pasted — has gained increasing respect and value, even when created on walls not owned by the artists.

The ruling sets up the fascinating scene of a trial in which art experts could be called to weigh in on the integrity of what court papers call “aerosol art,” and to evaluate the graffiti artists themselves. Evidence will include articles on 5Pointz, a building complex along Jackson Avenue in Long Island City that was covered with spray-painted murals by top street artists from New York and around the world.

Painting with Mr. Wolkoff’s permission, artists had turned the spot into an international graffiti mecca, an exhibition space and conservatory.

Preparing to build high rises on the property in 2013, Mr. Wolkoff faced opposition from the artists, who sought to block the demolition. He hired a crew that painted over the murals under cover of night, then left the building sitting for months until it was knocked down in 2014.

The judge’s ruling offers the artists a chance to confront Mr. Wolkoff in court and to seek redress for painting over their work, said Jonathan Cohen, an artist who had curated the murals and helped organize the artists at 5Pointz since 2002.

Mr. Cohen said he was hopeful that the suit might become a landmark case to establish street art as legitimate contributions worthy of protection.

Astoria housing development is a-hummin'

"Hi!

I've been enjoying Ye Olde Queens Crap blog for some time now. I've been a Queens homeowner and resident for 17 years on 30th Rd, and that still makes me a "new guy" on this block!

I'm writing you regarding a particularly polished turd that just went up here. While it is well....crappy, that's not really the worst of it. If I just had to look at it, and accept it...well that's not too bad. But sadly that isn't the case. These folks have installed an enormous HVAC system on the roof that is bombarding an entire block with a low frequency droning sound - 24 hours a day!

So, we've reached out to them (this neighborhood is still local enough that through mutual friends I was able to contact them directly) - they were very nice - but ultimately completely dismissive towards us.

I know ZERO about posting something on a blog or anything like that. Might you be interested in helping? I mean this piece of junk deserves a spot on Queens Crap if only for its transparent co-opting of the Welling Court Mural Project - but then to shrug off the complaints of the neighborhood (including my neighbor who has been here since 1952!!) So much more to tell, but I won't waste any more of your time (unless you ask).

How do you spell dreck? This website will tell you."

- Anonymous

"P.S. They are spending far more on the appliances for their outdoor rooftop kitchen than whatever the cost may be of a properly designed noise enclosure.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!"

Graffiti taking too long to clean up

From CBS 2:

The de Blasio administration was pushing back Thursday evening after a report critical of its anti-graffiti efforts.

As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, the administration is understandably sensitive to complaints that quality of life has diminished on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s watch, and graffiti is certainly a major quality of life concern.

Now, there is a new report out saying the time between the city receiving a graffiti complaint and cleaning up the graffiti has increased substantially.

It is impossible to imagine New York City without graffiti, but many residents would prefer much less of it.

“Nobody is paying attention to anything anymore,” said Awilda Ortiz of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “Even when they call, they take too long to show up.”

Indeed, a new report is critical of response times for the Graffiti-Free NYC program. City workers are using solvent to dissolve and power spray to wash away graffiti.

Three years ago, the average time between complaint and cleanup was 67 days. Last year, that grew to 114 days – far too long for critics.

Among those critics is state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Queens).

“The whole way to address graffiti is to paint over and remove it, immediately. You’ve got to go immediately,” Avella said. “So that’s totally unacceptable. It defeats the whole purpose of the program.”

Fun Friday Caption Contest

DOT starts cleaning up graffiti

From the Daily News:

City Department of Transportation crews showed their graffiti-busting bona fides at the Manhattan Bridge on Friday to fend off criticism that the agency was shirking its clean up duties.

State Sen. Tony Avella of Queens had complained that Mayor de Blasio and the DOT “cannot walk and chew gum at the same time” because they declined his request to issue a contract to hire cleaners for agency property like street lights and traffic signs.

The agency told Avella it was “difficult for DOT to expend many precious resources for the removal of graffiti at the expense of needed maintenance and transportation improvements.”

But as crews on Friday attacked graffiti in a bridge underpass with potent-smelling chemicals and hot water, Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said no money had been diverted from graffiti clean up of bridges and other structures. The DOT is working with the city's Economic Development Corporation on a $7 million removal effort,she said.

“We're working closely with them and identifying hot spots where we see a lot of graffiti," she said.

While the DOT is focused on Vision Zero street safety projects, she said, “the mayor also is a believer in the broken windows theory and is investing also to do graffiti clean up.”

Is DOT ignoring graffiti due to Vision Zero?

From CBS 2:

A Queens lawmaker is calling on the city to do more to remove graffiti.

State Sen. Tony Avella told CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez that after requesting graffiti removal in his district, he discovered the clean-up on city property had taken a back seat to other priorities.

“The fact that now the city under Mayor de Blasio and the Department of Transportation has chosen not to respond to graffiti requests unless it’s a profane nature or racist nature, it’s highly unacceptable,” Avella said.

Avella said Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg told him the city wasn’t responding to all graffiti complaints because the agency was concentrating all its resources on the mayor’s Vision Zero program.

Graffiti on the rise

From CBS:

Graffiti was an infamous symbol of the decline and decay of New York City in the 1970s and ’80s, and some now say it appears to be making a comeback.

As CBS2’s Scott Rapoport reported Monday, residents have noticed and they want it gone.

According to the NYPD, the number of graffiti complaints citywide in 2015 is up 15 percent from last year. Meanwhile, arrests for graffiti are down 10 percent compared with last year.

And while a far cry from the out-of-control graffiti craze some 40 years ago, the current graffiti is getting noticed.