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The Artful Dodger — Page 2
Daniel Paquin, a 52-year-old Quebec native and former
parking enforcer, is Vancouver’s anti-graffiti
coordinator. “It’s the beginning of a crime
career for many kids,” he claims. We’re
in his sparsely decorated office on West 12th Avenue;
a calendar promoting the city’s public “paint-out”
events is the only adornment on the beige walls. With
an annual budget of $600,000, Vancouver provides a legal
outlet for “graffitists” with these mural
competitions. Many street artists steer clear, though,
because political content is forbidden and participants
must provide ID, allowing the VPD’s Anti-Graffiti
Unit to collect intel on styles and techniques.
Paquin appreciates the artistry of some illegal posters
and murals, he says, “but if you give this much,
human nature shows that they’ll take this much
more. Same with garage-sale signs and lost-cat posters.
Who removes them? City crews. If there were no rules,
the entire city would be like a garbage dump.”
Private businesses are responsible for graffiti removal
on their property, and if they don’t clean it
themselves within 10 days the city will take the initiative
and bill them as much as $1,200.
“Leave it there and your neighbour will get it
next,” says Paquin. “Unfortunately, our
bylaw isn’t strict enough and we’re short-staffed,”
he adds, noting that the city’s sole graffiti
inspector has a backlog of 200 tagged locations. Paquin
is hoping for a bylaw change that will allow the city
to buff graffiti without the 10-day wait. The anti-graffiti
budget has been cut in half over the past five years;
meanwhile, Paquin anticipates higher costs down the
road. “Otherwise, we’re going to get bombed
like crazy for the Olympics.”
Vancouver was the first Canadian city to create anti-graffiti
bylaws; we pay private contractor Goodbye Graffiti $191,000
yearly to maintain a buffed city. Its mandate is to
remove guerrilla art promptly, particularly if it’s
hateful, overtly political, anti-police, or on a civic
cynosure like the Olympic clock. Since 1997, when it
started up, the company has launched 17 Canadian franchises,
including two just opened in Montreal. Its squad of
12 buffers hits our streets daily, on scooters and in
“paint trucks” equipped with power washers,
a mind-boggling selection of beige and grey paints,
and a host of graffiti-removing chemicals, some more
eco-friendly than others.
“We have an arsenal of weapons,” confirms
Clevens Louis, Goodbye Graffiti’s manager, as
we set off with 25-year-old “graffiti removal
technician” Kyle Hazlewood. Our first stop is
a Commercial Drive video store. Someone has put a small
silver “SDS” tag on the brick wall. Hazlewood
dons a respirator, applies a stinky gel to the brick,
and, before power-washing, builds a little makeshift
dam to trap and suction the water. Removing the tag
takes about 20 minutes of labour and 10 litres of water,
much of which ends up coursing down the sidewalk anyway.
“I could spray that wall for an hour,” he
says, “and it’d just keep foaming.”
These days, “Riot 2010” is by far the most
popular tag scrawled on walls, snazzy bus shelters,
billboards, and hydro boxes. BC Hydro uses in-house
buffers (with a $100,000 annual tab), as does BC Transit,
though only a fraction of its million-dollar vandalism-cleaning
bill goes to buffing. The parks board devotes another
$175,000 each year to fighting this ongoing war against
ink, paint, and sidewalk chalk.
By lunch, Hazlewood has buffed four high-priority tags.
None would qualify as street art or true graffiti. There
are no ornate, multihued “throw-ups” or
large murals known as “masterpieces,” just
crude tags: “fuck da police,” the word “penis,”
“shady chink” (probably a tagger’s
name, not a racist sentiment), and felt-pen messages
at a West End sleeping spot for homeless people, including
phone numbers and “Get well soon Mommy”
in a heart.
“It’s satisfying,” says Hazlewood,
who grew up in Hope, the son of an RCMP officer. “I’m
doing my job, making businesses happy.” When I
mention that street artists like weakhand also consider
themselves civic workers, he says, “That doesn’t
impress me. It’s a crime.”
Clevens Louis, the Goodbye Graffiti manager, who did
some tagging as a teenager growing up in Brooklyn, occasionally
finds the job more ethically complicated. “Sometimes
I feel bad,” he admits. “It’s a fascinating
form of communication.” When he’s called
down for buffing, he says, “I tell them, ‘Hey,
I’m just giving you a clean canvas.’ ”
If he comes across work he likes, he takes a photo of
it before it’s erased. His favourites he uses
as screen savers.
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