To City Councilors

I wrote this to the City Council this morning and to the Portland Press Herald and the League of Young Voters.  In the past, smaller markings have made me upset.  But quite literally, our downtown was destroyed this morning. 

The markings are for a new gas replacement project.  I can’t foresee the gas company replacing the entire street, the cobblestones, the sidewalk, and the granite.   So what we’ll be left with when this is done is a new strip of pavement down the middle of the street and spray-painted everything. 

Live shot from about 10 minutes ago.  I went for a field trip with Freeland to photograph the damage.

Here’s my letter:

And the links from the letter:

Flickr site

Similar article (by David Hench Portland Press Herald)

Graffiti Gone Wild

There are two types of graffiti artists in Portland.  There are the punchers.  These are the youthful spiky hair dickheads who tag a wall with graffiti.  And there’s the Portland Public Services Department.

In the haste to mark out a project, they roam the streets aerosoling everything in sight.  Keep your kids close folks, these guys are likely to put a blue stripe in the middle of little Sally’s forehead.

If I run for City Council some day, it will be to remove this unsightly spray paint from our beautiful brick and cobblestone streets.  To this end, I have put together a cool map photo mashup where you can view the destruction.  In one walk from my bus stop to work, I was able to photograph 10 unique spots (and I probably missed some). Click the picture to check it out.

Some of these tags have been here a long time too; rain doesn’t wash away this artwork.  If you agree it’s too much and you’re a Portlander, Like the Facebook post or pass it on and let’s see if we can create some buzz.  Remember that we’re not against the Public Services Department – they do good work too – but just trying to bring up something they’re probably not too aware of.

If this doesn’t work, I’m going to spray paint their building.