Seven Red

In perhaps the best graffiti story of the year, genius Chicago Alderman James Balcer called up the Department of Streets and Sanitation to have an unsightly graffiti mural removed. This mural was even more outrageous for being mysteriously signifying: it portrayed the system of cameras being installed all around the city in a somewhat less than positive light, and the CPD along with them. The Alderman, annoyed by this urban blight and double-outraged by the insult cast by these vandals at the police department, made the call, and out came the Graffiti Blasters program with their buckets of dark brown paint to beautify the Bridgeport neighborhood. There’s just one problem: it was a completely legal painting. From the Chicago Public Radio story:

Villa did the work as part of a local art festival. The mural itself was on private property, on a wall owned by the mother of a festival organizer. Villa says several Chicago Police officers approached him about the work while he painted. He thinks they may have been offended but he says the painting doesn’t have an anti-police message.

Oops.

Now the Alderman is stuttering and stammering about having received complaints and the like. What a buffoon. I don’t, however, buy the story that the Alderman was trying to “censor” a message. Rather, the thing just looks like street graffiti because it has the same aesthetic, and it was clearly done with spray paint. So you get this whole jumping-the-gun complex based almost solely on appearance. But consider the default: the city doesn’t even enquire about the ownership of the wall itself, the property! They just go ahead and paint over it. So you get this hilarious reversal whereby the Chicago Alderman and the Graffiti Blaster task force of the Department of Streets and Sanitation is actually vandalizing the property by painting over the graffiti! Shouldn’t somebody arrest the Alderman for criminal conspiracy of some sort? Wasn’t the Alderman damaging somebody’s property for the sake of some aesthetic sensibility?

The Peaceful Neighborhood (from the Chicago Public Radio blog)

The Despicable Vandalism!

I want to file this under “Shit that Makes Graffiti Writers Laugh.” My favorite line from the radio story? “What the mural is supposed to mean is anyone’s guess.” Heh heh heh. That’s the cherry on top.

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