London:  A graffiti artist called Mobstr has created and photographed a series of creative and entertaining examples of street art.  He combines empty billboards, blank signs, and unusual architectural elements with subtle irony resulting in some smart street art.  Here is the link.

As the frequency of graffiti tagging continues to rise, so too do the costs for cleaning it up.  In a creative attempt to force the graffiti taggers to shoulder a greater percentage of the financial burden, both to cover real abatement costs and to discourage future graffiti tagging, in San Francisco, the City Attorney is filed a civil law suit against a graffiti taggers to cover the costs of cleaning up her graffiti tags.  The complaint lists 58 tags and assigns the remediation cost at $53,788 or $927.38 per graffiti tag.

In this case, most of the property owners will be city or transit agencies.  

City graffiti abatement staff photograph graffiti tags prior to removing them using the city's 311 app so that a database of graffiti tags can be accumulated.

New Orleans, Louisiana.  The Grand Movie Theater has sat vacant for 10 years and its expansive walls have proved an irresistible and frequent target of graffiti attack.  

Then Muralist Brandan Odums and other local artists decided to change the blight and negativity into a symbol of peace with an extensive mural.  Odums has successfully created graffiti-styled murals on several other vacant buildings in New Orleans.

After four days of priming to cover the graffiti tags and prep the wall for the mural, the thanks from the local graffiti taggers was a fresh round of graffiti tags.

Two steps forward, one step back.

The hope is to have the Peace Wall completed in time for the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

This is a very clever and amusing photo series that documents one wall in the UK that saw various graffiti, street art and graffiti abatement over a period of one year.  The Street Artist is have a virtual dialog with the city graffiti abatement officer and uses stencils to prod, inquire and test the rules for how the city is supposed to clean up graffiti.  Worth the look.  


Click here for the link. 

In Ogden, Utah, a partnership between the city and local art college is converting a blighted underpass which has been a frequent target for graffiti attack into an extensive mural and public artwork. 

This effort is making the underpass "feel" safer for pedestrians and joggers and eliminates a source of blight and frustration.  The murals may not eliminate the graffiti, but should significantly decrease the frequency.  Excellent anti-graffiti coatings can be applied to help protect the mural and allow easy graffiti removal when a tagger decides to tag over the mural. 

In Port Angeles, Washington, Richard Schneider, after retiring from the National Park Service, decided to take matters into his own hands.  He has removed over 70 graffiti tags over the past few months.  He is highly motivated to improve this city and community by eliminating graffiti blight.  He attempts to remove graffiti tags as quickly as possible to discourage them from reoccurring.  By removing the tags quickly, the hope is that the taggers move on to areas less visible to the community or stop all together. 

Chris Campagna is a Chicago resident of Historic Pullman neighborhood.  He is also and artist, a father, a advocate for his community, and very creative.  When his garage door was spray painted with graffiti, he decided to turn it into a giant chalkboard for his kids and other kids in the neighborhood to draw on any time.