May 21, 2008
Vallone's New Bill Tags Construction Site Owners
Photo via Jake Dobkin
In a recent Guardian article the subject of the New York art world rejecting street art was touched upon, a topic that led to a bigger discussion on New Yorker's views on the medium.
One New Yorker, Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., has proposed a new bill which will attempt to do what decades of efforts has failed to do: abolish graffiti. The NY Sun notes that the "legislation would amend an earlier law sponsored by Mr. Vallone requiring commercial and residential building owners to either remove graffiti from their property or give the city permission to clean it up." The new bill, however, would require the construction site owners to pay out of pocket for the clean up efforts. From the press release:
Vallone's legislation effectively makes the owner of construction sites responsible for keeping their property graffiti-free. If graffiti is reported on their premises, the city can serve the owner with a notice requiring him to clean the graffiti or sign a waiver granting city workers permission to do so. If the owner fails to follow any of these provisions, this legislation gives the city the right to enter the premises and to remove or conceal the graffiti, with all costs to be reimbursed by the property owner.This would put pressure on the owners to keep their sites free of graffiti; Vallone believes they are a target for taggers, saying, "In too many places, graffiti punks treat construction sites like their personal vandalism playgrounds." But especially with graffiti on the rise and seemingly unstoppable, what can the bill accomplish by punishing the site owners and not the taggers?
Vallone has a long anti-graffiti history, and in 2006 AnimalNYC targeted him by posting his address after "KIKO, a 28 year-old graffiti writer, was sentenced to 6 months in prison and forced to pay a $25,000 fine for his recent tagging spree in Astoria."
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Construction site owners may consider teaming up with the taggers and giving Vallone's home a new look!
Or better yet, construction site owners might keep a couple of guys on site to catch the piece of shit "street artists" and give them a taste of street justice. You should suffer for your art.
On another note, Jen Carlson, you are such a pretender.
"The fire eating woodsmanblahblahblah?" Save that shit for your Livejournal.
Seriously... are you really encouraging people to vandalize this guy's home by linking to a website with his home address on it?
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and finally..
"But especially with graffiti on the rise, what can the bill really accomplish?"
Um, it can keep it from continuing to rise and maybe even get it to decrease.
The more important question is: "With stupidity on the rise, what will all these idiotic rhetorical questions accomplish?"
You have got to be kidding -- is Gothamist actually encouraging graffiti artists to tag Vallone's home? I'm calling Vallone's office right away. I'm sure this must be illegal, and I hope that Vallone, who is the chair of the Public Safety Committee finds some way to fine or arrest the editors of this blog. This is absolutely dispicable and disgusting journalism.
Anyone who is reading encouragement from Gothamist to tag Vallone's home is quite simply making shit up, imo. Linking to other site which did that 2 years ago does not mean you support it or encourage it.
Anyway, this bill is misguided. Let's say you have a construction site. It gets tagged, now you have to clean it up. You think the taggers are going to suddenly play nice? Nope.. it'll get tagged again. Then you're on the hook to clean it again. Rinse and repeat until the project is complete. Developer now has to charge more for rent, etc., and then Vallone will probably wonder why building costs are so high.
eyekantspel, both comments right on the mark.
As much as I hate to come to Jen Carlson's defense, I seriously doubt that her painful-to-read prose would result in anyone tagging Vallone's home.
I note that she's already amended the post--
But especially with graffiti on the rise, what can the bill really accomplish?
um.. just a wild guess... maybe the bill is intended to slow/reverse the rise in graffiti?
The scribbled scrawling depicted is exactly the crap that people are tired of. Jen, do you and Jake Dobkin and whoever else seriously consider that art?
I can see artistic merit in a few of the things that have been covered on Gothamist before, but anyone who suggests that the scribbles on a construction site depicted is art lacks the ability to tell art from crap.
You can piss in a glass and call it wine, but anyone with any taste/sense knows the difference.
Just great. Talk about stupid. The victim now has to pay for being victimized. That's like saying a good looking woman deserves to be raped because she's good looking. How stupid is that.
Like KIKO has a spare $25,000 hanging around to pay the fine.
Catch the graffiti artists and make them clean up the mess, instead of sending them to jail.
Politburo, I'd tend to agree with you, except it says that the owner can sign a waiver granting city workers permission to clean it up for them. That seems reasonable, and would eliminate the eyesore.
Currenly most owners at these sites have no incentive to remove graffiti- as you note, they'd incur costs in doing so with the expectation that the vandals would simply do it again. This bill would give them an incentive to at least let the city take care of it. Hopefully the city will do more to crack down on this and require the vandals to help pay for the costs of enforcement.
eyekantspel - It's really unclear from the writeup. It talks about the waiver, but then says developers would have to reimburse the city. Is that reimbursement provision only supposed to kick in if the dev doesn't sign the waiver or clean it themselves?
that's how i read it. if it just requires a waiver to let the city clean it, i think it's a good idea. if it forces fees on construction site owners for things that they can't control, i think it's unfair.
i suppose that it does create a 1st Amendment issue though. if the contruction site owner viewed the graffiti as art -- supported it being there -- and the city deemed it otherwise and required its removal, i could imagine this could end up in court.
I'd like to note that while I frequently find myself criticizing Jen Carlson posts, and maybe being a little mean about it, gothamist (and presumably Jen) hasn't censored me, which I appreciate. I remember being similarly critical of Jake Dobkin in the past and my comments would disappear.
Vallone should be spending his time building his "graffiti punk" database (hint: start at Streetsy) and meeting with GE and the like about vandalproof materials for the City and not trying to drum up funds with bogus fines on the citizens.
Props for keeping punks in the lexicon tho.
Judging from an additional sentence in the Sun article, yes, the site owner has to pay... signing a waiver doesn't mean the cleanup is free:
"While the city does not charge commercial and residential property owners for the cost of removing graffiti, this new bill would require construction site owners to pay for cleaning services out of their own pockets."
Does the graffiti really bother you that much? Do you really find it more offensive than the obnoxious blanket advertising (which is often equally illegal, but never chased after in the way graffiti is)?
Also, that graffiti is an eyesore is debatable. I appreciate most of it, even some of the stuff most people think is just terrible. Especially if it's a throwup on some wood over a construction site that is going to come down in a couple months time (if that) is it really that big a deal?
And while we can debate whether it's art or not or debate whether it's an eyesore or not and whether it should be eliminated for THOSE reasons, Vallone's reasoning for why graffiti is bad (his thinking is that it's all gang related) is off the mark.
Precisely! City screwing decent citizens once again.
if it fines owners for this, it should also give a waiver to owners permitting them to beat the living crap out of anyone caught doing this.
Does the graffiti really bother you that much? it is a quality of life crime. Some shit in NYC we are forced to live with. Trash on the streets, potholes, dog poop on the sidewalks.
Graffiti is a selfish crime - it is one person damaging the property of another, and usually imposing an eyesore that becomes part of the landscape for the rest of us. The same way I support a big fine/jail for someone who doesn't pick up their dog crap, I fully support fines and jail for graffiti artists. If you want to paint, you have every right to do so- on paper, on canvas, on your own property. If you want to paint on someone else's property, and you don't have permission to do so, it's a crime, not only against the property owner but on society at large. So on behalf of society, fuck you.
Right on eyekantspel.
But especially with graffiti on the rise and seemingly unstoppable, what can the bill accomplish by punishing the site owners and not the taggers?
OTOH, maybe putting the site owners on the hook can make them punish the taggers. Catch them and either bury them in concrete or take them up to a nice, high, unfinished floor for a long walk. Who'd miss a few graffiti "artists," anyway?
BTW, why am I not surprised that Jake Dobkin would find that ugliness above worth immortalizing in a photo then on a blog?