Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Art / News Bay Ridge Fights Recent Upswing in Graffiti by Celebrating It
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 1:51 PM
Graffiti writers live to have their tags seen by as large an audience as possible; having one's spray-painted scrawl featured in a movie or a newspaper photograph is a great accomplishment. So it's peculiar that State Senator Marty Golden of Bay Ridge is trying to combat the recent bombing of Third Avenue by posting photographs of the graffiti to his Facebook page. "The idea," the Daily News reports, "is to spread the photos so anyone who recognizes the tag can report it and help bust the vandal." But who does Sen. Golden think is reading his Facebook page? Kids with the dirt on their fellow kids? Outraged to discover that "Nave" has taken his tag off the pages of his spiral notebook and onto a utility box on 78th Street? Or trembling with determination to turn in their vandalistic contemporaries but unsure if local politicians want them to? "If these kids find this out they’re going to go bomb Bay Ridge even more," one graffiti artist and teacher told the News.
But one graffiti cleaner backs the plan. "It’s no secret within the community who’s doing this,” he told the paper. “It’s a good idea because...you can incentivize people to turn these people in.” The only problems with his reasoning are: (a) it is a big secret who's doing this among Marty Golden's Facebook followers and (b) there is no incentive.
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