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The city council has recently passed a new graffiti law-- it goes into effect on March 29th. If you haven't heard about it yet, here are the important details:
- Law affects buildings with more than six units
- Fines up to $300 if landlords don't clean property after written warning
- Landlords have 60 days to respond to warning before fine
- Can't be fined more than once every 6 months
- City will do the cleaning for free if landlord signs liability waiver
The Villager did a nice piece on the law today-- they interviewed landlords (who complained about the fines), residents (who wanted the landlords to clean the buildings), and graffiti artists (who said the new law wouldn't stop them from doing their art.) The best quote, however, comes from a streetart fan:
“Graffiti gives the city character,” said Caroline Aim, who owns the Tomato Store, an organic gourmet food shop on the corner of Canal and Washington Sts. The store has a graffiti mural on its outside wall, which is about 9 feet high and 35 feet wide. She wouldn’t be liable under the new law, because she commissioned the work.“The mural was actually good for business; we had lots of people stopping in on our store when the kids did the work,” she said. Aim paused and then added in concession, “I guess if the city wants owners to get their property cleaned, though, they probably should.”
For example of graffiti worth considering as legitimate art, check out the 18000+ pictures at Streetsy, or the amazing coverage at Wooster Collective. [Semi-related: check out PlasmaSlug on Gridskipper, and this video of kids catching a fill that we saw on Vimeo.]
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I think this is it, graffiti will be gone in a matter of months. Vallone finally won.
Law affects buildings...
Graffiti will be gone in a matter of months. People say the new trains would kill graffiti, but it survived on walls. Now, it will finally be killed of.
Your post seems to be using the article’s example of people appreciating a commissioned work of art to argue that uninvited graffiti is something other than vandalism. Please tell me you understand the difference between commissioning a mural and having someone tag your building.
Caroline Aim's quote would make a lot more sense if it were, "Murals give the city character."
Caroline Aim is half right. Graffiti gives the city character, but I doubt she'd like it if someone tagged and defaced her commissioned outer wall mural. A lot of graffiti shows some real artistic talent, but the majority of it is untalented asinine narcissist posing. Punishing building owners for being the victims of property crimes seems wrong. On a side note, can't property owners avoid a fine by claiming that any graffiti is "commissioned work"?
How would you like YOUR building, whether it is residential or commercial, blasted with ugly graffiti? And its cousins scratchiti and acid etching.
So '70's.
It is a crime. It is filthy.
Okay, people, let's stop the fucking "is graffiti art?" debate. We've been through it A MILLION TIMES.
The relevant question is: Is it fair to fine the landlord for the actions of a vandal? The cost of painting over huge tags will add up to be more than the $300-per-six-months fine for something that is NOT THE FAULT of the landlord!
Also, if the landlord signs a waiver, we, the taxpayers, are paying to paint over graffiti.
With homeless children and a high homeless rate, and low amounts of affordable housing, is this really where we need our resources to go? Now THAT'S a real question.
The easiest way to prevent graffiti is to make it a capital offense, as well as the possession of spray paint or acid or whatever. Scratchiti is a bit more difficult, but surveillance on trains would make it a bit easier to execute offenders.
We must do all in our power to prevent destructive barbarians from destroying what little civility we have left in this world.
The city should start fining mugging victims. These tourists come to town, flashing their fancy fanny packs, tempting young people to steal them. A fine of $300 would insure that they would think twice and stop waving around those tempting fanny packs filled with ipods and lozenges.
It seems a little misguided to me to put the onus on landlords to be more vigilant about policing their property for graffiti. What are they supposed to do, hire security details for every building?
Grafitti is against the law for a reason. It is the act of someone defacing property that doesn't belong to them. It doesn't matter whether the artist is Gustav Klimt or Joey Baggadonuts from the Bronx. It doesn't matter if it creates character or contributes to blight. Debating these issues is beside the point in my opinion. There is no picture, phrase or design that I want painted, drawn or scratched into the side of my building. Whether you're saying "ALKN" or "You Are Beautiful," graffiti is a criminal act.
Agreed, em. Did you notice that the last time I threatened to "tag" Jake's neighborhood if he advocated graf again, he wrote that I'd be risking serious consequences from people in the area if I got caught. Nice double standard, isn't it? It's okay if he and his ilk do it, but if I did it as revenge, I'd get beaten.
Yes, I'm continuing to create my poop art on the sidewalk in front of the gothamist building and Krupniks brownstone.
i like graffiti on my building. they recently buffed it out and now it's dull. i don't want nyc to be toronto.
the government can buff all they want, but that won't stop grafitti artists. There is no way the city can keep up with the amount of artists out there and their creativity. I think this is really just going to lead to a new era in graf. You're either going to see a lot more stuff like the work done by skewville or there will be a lot more mass produced stuff that is easy, quick and cheap to put up. A lot of the toy tags will probably disappear, but I'm relatively ok with that.
300 max for 6 month span is a measley sum.
this just allows corporations to capitolize on guerilla marketing activities such as the recent
sony psp ads. they can just pay the fines for the landlord and plaster whatever they wan't. freedom of art/speech now will have a pricetag.
what i want to know is what is the liability waiver??? sounds fishy. and if the fines are per graf piece, then 5pointz in lic is gonna be incurring a boatload.
yo im just postin to say that all of you people that are against graffiti dont know how it feels to do graff. it is something that gives us things to do now i will agree that there is a lot of wack graff out there and i would get mad if someone bombed my buildin with that crap but i wouldnt mind letting a bunch of kids just have fun and paint huge murals without worrying about the cops or whoever. well im just sayin have some empathy for the writers i bet that if you grew up in the life style that we grew up in you would use it too and would get pissed off when people as your self start getting all crazy and complaining