From the inbox:Yesterday on my way over to the park I spotted two guys tagging the bridge that leads from Greenwood Playground to Prospect Ave. About halfway over the bridge (over the expressway) I looked down to see them tagging the bridge. As I rode a little further along the bridge (I was biking) I saw them stop and tag again. It was a little after 6pm and the bridge was busy! I passed a family on my way over then another as I was exiting. I was able to take a few pictures of them in action but through the chain link of the fence. The ride down the bridge proved to be pretty toxic as the smell of spray paint was still in the air. After my last pic (I got the back of them walking on Prospect Ave) one turned and saw me about a second after I clicked. When he saw the camera he yelled something about me being a snitch. I yelled back (pedaling feverishly, nervous they'd try and grab the camera) to stop defacing property.
We've included the pictures this reader forwarded in hopes someone knows these two. We know some wonder why we spend so much time on this stuff but generally feel its an important issue. First, the damage these taggers cause uses public funds for the clean up that could be better spent. Secondly, the damage to private property is just plain wrong. We know of a local homeowner who can't afford to remove the tags on the side of his beautiful brick home and has been waiting months for the city's clean up crew. This poor guy has 'backfat' and some other misc graffiti 'work' on the entire side of his home. Because the tags are on brick it requires a special power wash or chemical to remove, not a cheap fix!
We'll be forwarding this post to the 66 and hope the word will get out and deter a few local 'artists' from tagging in Kensington.
52 comments:
you've reached a new low on the blog with this post.
this nancy drew/provinical vigilante stuff will only fan the flames of the fire.
what does posting these teens' pictures really accomplish? even if we actually recognize the out of focus faces in the pics (which is unlikely), then what? do we then have some condescending, hostile instructional
"conversation" with them, or wave a frying pan at them, or call the cops?? i really don't get the point.
to me, the only thing this kind of post actually does is breed paranoia and class warfare in the very community you claim to be such an advocate of. and it reeks of a form of inadvertent profiling.
the blurry profile = every 12-18 year old kid in kensington.
what do you know- some asshole teens tagging up the hood- who would have thought?!? <---sarcasm
I don't see how posting this breeds paranoia. And exactly what fire is being fanned? Everyone already knows teens are assholes; especially when they wear long t-shirts and baggy jeans. Posting the photo is reasonable. If you do recognize the kids, because you are them or related to them(only you can recognize yourself and your clothes in a blurry photo), then you can tell the kids- "chill; you're going to get your dumb asses locked-up", and avoid having to go to the cops, while still assuring a tag-free hood.
I don't think Jen expects us to stop these kids on the street for a lecture or call the cops even if we did recognize them. They are kids after all, and you should talk to their parents before you go to talk to cops. Let the parents straighten it out- I'm sure they don't know what's going on.
What I don't like about the post, (and it's not Jen's fault, its more the rat who took the pic) is the soviet style surveillance of eachother.
I meant to use this handle on that last post
Anon 1.22
we take suggestion and post ideas at kensingtonbrooklyn@gmail.com. If you don't like the direction of the posts/ blog email us w photos, text or a simple tip! It is not easy to cover a neighborhood while maintaining a life and real job. We are open to ideas and many of these summer posts from from the inbox as our real life has taken over a bit. Regardless, we posted this item in hopes some parent or friend sees this and warns taggers to go elsewhere or grow up and take a graphics/art class!
C'mon! Why shouldn't people post pix of cretins tagging the bridge? I don't feel pity for them at all, and hopefully they will suffer some consequences.
I agree that posting the pix is ok.
I'd love to get a piece of the asshole that uses the tag "Boner." I will beat the shit out of him. He's tagged up an entire side of my apartment building. (On Beverley/E. 16th)
A few years ago an acquaintance claimed to know "Boner" and thought he was so cool for tagging. Evidently Boner lives in Midwood. I'd love to tag his house... piece of shit.
i have no problem with posting the photos. they aren't even *that* recognizable. They need to be shamed and people are more stupid to do such things in the day of YouTube/internet (think the politicians and aol cancellation fiasco).
However, I dont think these kids' parents care what they're doing. there are are a lot of parents who let them roam around alone at age 9 at all house or think their disrespectful antics are "cute" when young. Anyways, these guys don't look like 12 yrs olds.. they look high school age.
I do wonder ... what I can do even if I saw them doing more tagging?? Yell? Tell the police? I don't think these will do a lot in long term prevention. But hey, maybe enough picture posts will eventually do something.
1:22 AM is a jackass. This has nothing to do with class warfare and everything to do with not wanting to live in a neighborhood covered in fucking graffiti if it can be prevented.
sorry.. at all hours. not at all house. :)
My favorite part about the posting of pics is that (as far as I can tell) THESE KIDS ARE WHITE!
Where are all the racist posters who have consistently assured us that anything that goes wrong in Kensington is the fault of the Mexicans and Blacks?
Thank you, vigilante photographer!
I believe "backfat" was retired due to public/police pressure; these kids must be "reeducated"; too bad there are no more beat cops.
I wish I knew these kids! Then I could let them know that Jen is trying to bust them and hopefully they'd bust her upside the f-in' head!
i think posting the photos is fine. i live a few blocks up the hill and will my eyes open for the paint weilding punks. tagging up a park wall shows profound disrespect for everybody else that uses the park. tagging up a construction fence or abandoned factory, i've got no problem with that.
anyone of these assholes caught tagging should be locked up for 5 years...yes i'm serious we need "rockefeller"-type laws for grafitti.
white trash
I heard there are some really nice suburbs of Indianapolis and Omaha with no graffiti and no parked cars without license plates. Perhaps you should consider relocationg.
9:51 AM - why do you read this blog if you want someone to bust jen upside her "f-in' head?"
i don't think you'd be saying that if there was graffiti on your personal property, would you?
This is a new low for this blog. I really can't take this anymore. This is the last time I read this crap.
This thread is out of hand. I commend Jen for her passion and devotion to the neighborhood and blog. Thank you, I really appreciate how you've made this site a virtual town meeting.
However, I worry you will be discouraged by internet thugs like
Anon 9:51 AM - "I wish I knew these kids! Then I could let them know that Jen is trying to bust them and hopefully they'd bust her upside the f-in' head!"
I use to run a community board and after a few years I had enough with ridiculous comments similar to Anon 9:51 AM. If this a in person town meeting, your initiatives would not be exposed to such ignorance. Comments like Anon 9:51 would be met with harsh criticism. Honestly, the Jersey City in me would snap and my man would have a one on one to deal with. I probably would have to get in line.
Two points
1. Keep posting and keep up the passion. Don't let the nay sayers discourage you.
2. Be careful, though I admire your dedication to the community, I worry about your safety. People (including me) have been jumped for dumber reasons. It isn't worth it, esp when you are matched up with more than one person (cowards).
hey 11:00, actually its you who will soon be leaving with that kind of attitude .. as neighborhoods improve, scumbags vanish soon enough
To 122am (Cat?): Apparently you are quite happy with your own neighborhood being made to look like a ghetto. Bridges are public property, and the tagging of private property is still a problem. When they tag your house, what will you do? Suggest they see talk to a social worker?
To 951am: You're just an idiot.
The vandals look to be a bit older than teens, more like in their early 20s. Probably angry stupid people, Brooklyn is full of them. Uneducated morons from uneducated families. As long as they outnumber people wanting to revitalize Kensington, our neighborhood will never change for the better.
Re: "Rat!"
anon 1.22 what a pathetic comment. snitch, rat etc. I guess you see nothing wrong w wasting hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars to paint that bridge rather then be pumped into schools or much needed street maintanence.
Re "knock people's heads off"
anon 9.51 really appropriate! I assume you lack the education or general intellect to make an intelligent comment. Small minded and simple... why don't we all go outside shit on the streets!
Serioulsy I think the majority of people commenting who are upset about this post would change thier tune if one of these kids tagged thier house/ building.
"bust her upside the f'ing head" poster is a MORON. If I find out who that anon poster is, I suggest all we civilized Kensington people
banish you from our 'hood.
You really have crossed the line, buster.
The boldness of thses grafitti vandals is disturbing. They know they won't get caught even in broad daylight. This is how the city went down the toilet during the pre-Giuliani/Bloomberg days.
First vandalism was tolerated on the subways and everywhere else. That gave an out of control look to neighborhoods. Then the middle-class fled those areas. I hope we are not going back to that now. If you were here 1975-1993 you know what I'm describing.
I'm also starting to wonder about how effective the NYPD is regarding quality of life issues. My few dealings with the NYPD haven't given me much confidence. They seem unable to deal with anything complicated and are easily annoyed.
First vandalism, then middle class flight? Interesting logic.
Who wants their neighborhood covered in grafitti? I'm all for expression and art, but not on private or public property! Pick up a pick of abandoned plywood and go to town!
I've been noticing a ton more graffiti again in the neighborhood - especially on this bridge. They will continue to do this...until they are stopped. Hopefully next time the cops will be close by.
1:22am, you're a chump. Apparently anyone can mess with your shit and you'll just suck it up because, oh no! wouldn't want to be condescending or classist. Oh, wait, you don't think this is about *your* shit. If it was, then you'd whine whine whine. You're clearly a trustifarian, cause you don't get the connection between people's stuff and the work they have to do to get it.
9:11 am, AMEN. That stopped the racist neanderthals before they could open their mouths. And to the people who defend tagging in some mistaken sense of connection to their non-white brothers and sisters: notice that the black and latino city workers are the ones cleaning this shit up?
11am, you're an idiot. The suburbs are full to the brim with little white boys like these two, trying sooooo hard to be what they think is cool and street. Maybe you should stop trying, too.
If caught they should be spray painted.
Look like middle class white kids or possibly white trash from the neighborhood. I alway assumed that it was tagging was a form of recreation for minorities.
Why didn't the photographer call 911? There is a reward for these graffiti vandals!
One thing that cuts down on tagging is murals. How about a cool mural on this bridge? Get some of the local kids involved, or maybe the stables- people must use this bridge en route to riding horses.
I am astounded by the level of racism and classism in the comments on this blog. It's just not OK to dehumanize people by deeming them "white trash" even if they are vandalizing property. I don't understand this. Someone please explain to me why so many people here are so upset about relatively minor things and so quick to condescend.
To 309pm: It's not a minor thing at all. The increase in grafitti is serious and not a good sign for the area. It sends the message that the animals have taken over. Who would buy a house or open a business in a grafitti covered neighborhood??
I bought a coop here despite the graffiti. I'm not really worried about or intimidated by "the animals" around here.
3:09pm, who is clearly 1:22 am, is still a chump.
How is reacting angrily to someone messing things up "condescending"? You're the one who's being patronizing, with your self-righteous calls of "racism" and "classism". This is a concrete issue of kids fucking with our neighborhood, not a sociology class.
Calling 911 for a graffiti hit may be a waste of time. That's a low priority for the police.
This site has tons of anti-graffiti information:
http://home2.nyc.gov/html/cau/html/anti_graffiti/main.shtml
or you could try:
http://nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mailcau.html (Drop downs: Select Complaint, then select Mayor's Paint Program)
Graffiti vandals are belligerent working class people. Their parents are that way too, so approaching them is a waste of time. Probably the sons/daughters of city workers. They are a waste of human life with prison in their future. Do you think 'tagging' is all they do? They will be replaced by future generations of belligerent working class people. They have been around here since the 1960s. At least back then if they pushed their luck someone would give them a beating. In 1971 two punks broke into an old lady's house on E2 Street. They bragged about robbing her. Both were found mutilated and dead in a canarsie junkyard.
3:09 is an idiot
i suggest we all go tag his/her property..i'm sure we'll get some real compassion
anyone who condones grafitti must live a pretty sad life...
and probably lives in filth
FYI- Backfat is no teenager and hasn't been for a long time. Hate to tell you this, but those guys aren't teenagers either. They graduated from SVA a couple of years ago. They've been busted several times before, spend a night in jail, and are back at it the next day. I think it is great the pics have been posted. THe only hope is for vigilantes to stop them as the cops can't seem to. If you see them around our neighborhood, shoo 'em outta here!!!!
Hate grafitti, think it's appropriate civic action to photograph and post pix of offenders BUT it brings out posters like 12:03 and some others. May come as a shock to you slopie wanna-bes, but blue collar people in Brooklyn are not a mass of "uneducated morons." The classism and racism so casually employed on this site is just shocking. How are new miserable people an improvement over existing miserable residents? And if 9:21 is correct, it's not even locals but alleged artists.
What is sad and amusing to me at the same time starts with the fact that this blog itself is a private property, with one wall of it exposed to a virtual, public street. The author is working hard on an expression of her very own Kensington on the web. She is creating her little snapshot of our neighborhood that is actually much more accessible and much more visible, and in some ways even more permanent, than any physical bridge or house, or street in zip code 11218. (Certainly easier to find.)
The comments here are not unlike scribbles on this private yet public wall. And not unlike on a real wall, one can write something meaningful here, sign it, help the author build a record of what Kensington used to be like in 2007. One can also bomb this place, spill trash in front of it or smear feces onto it, wearing a troll mask.
With anonymity slowly becoming a romantic thing of the past, even the dumbest and most offensive comments here will probably one day be seen as some serious, naive, honest record of what Kensington used to be like in August of 2007.
(At least for a few of its citizens who found it important enough to share it with their world...)
Oh, and it might actually be much easier to wash a brick wall of a house than it is to clean Google's cache.
; )
in the 'real' world, we report crimes to the police. when we notice old food on the shelves of supermarkets, we talk to the manager. blog as pseudo-robin hood/community vigilante i find disturbing and cowardly. good luck tracking down these 'animals' and i'm just glad there wasn't some jerk taking my photo when i was caught shoplifting in high school. also, 1:50 please remind me why all teens are assholes? i'm going to go put on my t-shirt and baggy jeans.
If i can get a little off course for a second.
I know that sometimes the person behind this blog post some pics under the heading "graffiti or art", one of them was a fish drawn on a wall. that fish appeared numerous times right next to 'backfat' in the same colored marker and paint at the same time. The one off the top off my head i can think of is between E.7th and E.8th on church, the fish and backfat side by side in blue marker and they showed up at the same time. It was either the same person or they went out tagging together and it was done a bunch of times. its just funny how they're both paint on private property yet people see one as graffiti and the other as art.
I bet if the kids in the pic were tagging up 'trader joe's please come to my hood' there would be some people saying "oh, its nothing." not everyone but some people definitely would.
To anon912: If you were shoplifting from my father's store, he surely would have beaten you senseless. Two puerto ricans once came in and stole some beer and stuff. My dad and uncle caught them and beat them with pieces of wood till they bled. What was hilarious was hearing my dad yell at them in italian, and the 2 PRs answering in spanish!
Old Timer, your ignorance brings back many memories. even though your subtext reeks of racism more than a pure hatred for all those who are working-class, if it weren't for working-class people, regardless of their ethnic background, this country would be in much worse shape economically than it already is.
i come from a family of working-class individuals who, yes, worked for the government--one for the city and one for a nationally-run laboratory in the Midwest. one as a secretary, the other as a heavy-equipment mechanic. they were uneducated immigrants who never got beyond an 8th grade diploma until in their 50s, when they finally had the time to return to night school and earn their GEDs.
and yes, they certainly could be belligerent. but they weren't dumb and they weren't racist and they weren't not caring. they survived the Depression, served in WWII, survived a son serving in Vietnam, volunteered in the community and worked hard to make a better life for their kids and those around them. they too would be "old-times" if they were still alive. and they would whole-heartedly disagree with your comments, and my brother and i certainly did not end up in prison.
Even though I not a minority, being Italian in a rural town in the Midwest meant it was close enough for many people. Growing up in the 70s I was teased for being "black-enough" because of my curly dark hair, dark brown eyes and easily tanned (and hairy) skin, was accused of having grandparents back in Italy that must have eaten cats and dogs because Italians were so unclean. I lost friends because their parents wouldn't let them come over any more because I was one of the only kids whose parents allowed a racial mix of students in our home -- white, black and the kids of the Mexican migrant workers who came back every year to work hard in the fields for the very same owners who would no longer let their kids come over to play. God how I could go on.
also, your laud for the apparent mob-style vigilante killings of those two thieves you wrote about--who yes, deserved punishment, but perhaps not the kind illegally meted out to them-- sickens me.
Grafitti cretins are a city-wide problem it seems. The guy in the story (link below) has been arrested a few times, and he's not a teenager. I wouldn't be suprised if these characters all know one another.
http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/118620901131840.xml&coll=1
i have teenagers-they are not all thugs! if my teen was destroying property et al. i would certainly want to know. ignorance is not a coping mechanism. some people seem too obsessed with park slope-this is not park slope. this blog is an excellent blog and it is indeed causing positive change. i think some newbies perhaps transplants from park slope are being a tad possessive about "discovering " kensington.change is inescapable-although i fervantly hope some history remains.
bridget
If Kensington taggers are going to art school I hope they have a backup plan. I have never seen more art-less graffiti as what this neighborhood has...
As far as vigilante-ism. It's not like a baseball bat was used here. Maybe simply turning the info to the police would have been the proper course but the amount of quality of life infractions around here leads me to believe that's not going to change a thing.
Wow, what an amazing road this post has traveled. It sounds like there is some tensions beyond the scope of this issue that should be addressed in this community.
Most things in life, as I'm sure we all know, are not simple and usually don't have a single solution. If you believe people have the right to tag public and private property to say something, express themselves or mark territory you are entitled to hold that opinion. However, I do not believe anyone has the right to paint or deface my property or my neighbors.
Does anyone really think any of this tagging is attractive and adds to the neighborhood? Does anyone think it is their right to do this? Should we just let it happen? Is it really cowardly to make information like this public? Are these people harmless or is there a reason to be afraid of what they will do?
I sincerely believe tolerating and defending graffiti is irresponsible and opens the door (even if it is not the taggers) to a decline in our quality of life. It's not a bad thing to want to live in a clean safe place.
Ditto Scott! Yeah blog!!!
is the 66 on newkirk avenue ??? if so what a waste of our money .
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