Some might call it art

Once in a blue moon, I spot a bit of graffiti that is quite out of the ordinary.


99.99% of it is just mindless tagging - like this.

But very occasionally - and I mean very - something different comes along. It's quite mad. Not my thing, but quite arresting nonetheless.

Whoever did this even has a proper signature.

Graffiti can be art - but most of it isn't. To describe most graffiti as "art" is an insult to artists. Most of it is immature talentless worthless crap.

We build it, they break it

If you've ever done a lap of the Bay Run, you would have passed these cabinets. They're owned by Jemena, and I reported them this week for a cleanup. Jemena don't have a web page where you can report graffiti - I just happen to have the phone number of the manager responsible for them.


I got an email recently from PushOn stating that the Parramatta Valley Cycleway was finally open. I went out and had a look, and found that all the recently installed lights had been smashed, and every light pole vandalised.

I imagine that the cycleway must have been liberally coated with glass when all those lights were smashed. The glass has been removed, but none of the lights have been fixed. I've reported it to Parramatta Council.

The poles are nice looking "heritage" style poles too - graffiti doesn't make them look any better.

Further out along the cycleway is a bridge that has been named after Bill Brewer. The sign is a nice tribute to the man, and some knuckledraggers have defaced it.

Every bridge along the Parramatta River has graffiti on the supports. As these are all road bridges, I am assuming that the RTA is responsible for them - they've all been reported. Most look like they have not been cleaned up for some time.

I also found two sets of bike lockers that have been heavily vandalised. This set, outside a ferry wharf, were also unusable due to bags of rubbish that had been dumped in front of the locker doors. I reported these to the Ministry of Transport, and they passed the messages on to Sydney Ferries and RailCorp.

Another vandalised bridge support along the Parramatta River. I'll go back in a few weeks time and see if they have been cleaned up.

Nice playground - shame about the litter and graffiti

I took one of the kids to Livvi's Place in Timbrell Park this morning (you'll have to Google it as my browser is not letting me insert links today). It's a great playground, completely refurbished in November last year. It's also popular.

Unfortunately, some of those that visit the playground don't care about other visitors. There was a Jim Beam can and beer bottle at the entrance when we walked in, and as I found out soon after, a smashed bottle in the BBQ area - a girl of 2 or 3 sliced her foot open on some glass when we were playing in the sand pit. That was just the tip of the iceberg - the entire area around the playground was covered with rubbish.

A Council worker showed up just after we arrived and spent about an hour walking around picking up rubbish and putting things back where they should be. I hate to think what it costs the ratepayers to supply a worker and a vehicle on a Saturday to visit our local parks to clean up after lazy people who can't be bothered carrying their rubbish to the nearby bins. I'm glad the Council is doing it, but I wish they didn't have to. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to do the area outside the playground - that would have kept a crew busy for the rest of the day.

And then there are those that leave their mark all over the playground equipment and BBQ facilities. There are plenty of partly visible tags on the playground equipment, showing where older tags have been not quite cleaned off, so I take it that the place has been vandalised a number of times since the re-opening in November.

Cool murals

More RTA traffic light cabinet murals around Balmain/Lilyfield. I like this one the best so far.

Not my thing, but better than being smothered in tags.

A school theme.

Quirky!

Imaginative.

Can't wait until our council gets a similar program up and running!

Quick work

Monday - a public toilet in Ashfield. (There was no graffiti here on Friday).

Tuesday - gone. Not the greatest of cleanup jobs, but quick work nonetheless.

Someone is on the ball. Nothing to do with me.

I have just the solution for that

I found this mural today on a bit of public property. This particular spot has been hit a few times before, and each time, the RTA has painted over it fairly quickly. I went past here last week and the wall was clean, so it's quite new. Hopefully, the RTA will have the painters round soon to clean it up.

The RTA could try a bit of lateral thinking and put up a mural here. It's a nice spot, and a mural would do wonders to improve a slab of boring, grey concrete. Something to think about.

Wheelie sensible use of ratepayers cash

Up in Umina, the youngsters are hopping in wheelie bins, rolling down hills, crashing into trees and killing themselves. In Ashfield, it's pretty flat, so they have to satisfy themselves with throwing wheelie bins into canals. Spotted two floating by today.

Dropped Ashfield Council an email tonight to let them know where they can go fishing for their bins.

A tale of two councils

Leichhardt Council has a program where they commission artists to paint the RTA cabinets at traffic lights. They've been slogging their way through the long list of traffic lights in the council area, and the results vary from fairly ordinary to pretty amazing (depending on how you feel about art).

I've asked Canada Bay Council to see if they can start a similar program next financial year. The difference between the two council areas is pretty stark, as you can see below.

One fine Sunday out west

90 minutes on the road this morning. Reported 3 abandoned cars, two vandalised post offices, six graffiti'd Energy Australia kiosks, one council park strewn with rubbish from end to end, one war memorial with graffiti on it, one bridge and one grandstand with graffiti and two RTA utility boxes. Phew.

Post no bills

Update - the day after I took the photo down below, it rained. Absolutely poured down. The posters that had been taken off this pole and dumped on the ground turned into a sodden mass, and when I went past a bit later in the day, they were halfway towards the drains.

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Someone - council perhaps? - has been through here and ripped all the posters off this traffic light post. However, instead of taking them away, they've left them on the footpath.

How long before they either blow around the streets, or wash into a drain and end up either in a water way or on a beach?

I wish the people who stuck these things up would think about what happens next.

Strange place to give way

There are no missing signs at the intersection, so I am guessing the sign was ripped out and tossed in The Bay some time ago, and given the murky state of the water normally, no one knew where it went - until the tide went out.

Someone has gone to a reasonable amount of trouble to rip this out of the ground, concrete base and all.

Various things

I love it when bone lazy people use a water bubbler in a park as a rubbish bin, instead of walking 10 metres to an actual rubbish bin. These coffees were purchased at the cafe 150 metres down the road (the Audi Five Dock advertising on them gives the cafe away), so the lazy sods were clearly capable of walking some distance. They just couldn't complete the final 10 metres to the bin.

The water bubbler is working - I tested it.

The bubbler, the bin and the seat the lazy sods were presumably reclining on.

Woe is me, what a distance to travel. It's even worse when you think that these people might be locals, and walked several hundred metres home from this park.

Another abandoned car - maybe. Reported to Council.

Either Energy Australia are getting much better at cleaning their assets, or the vandals are slowing down. I have reported 9 vandalised kiosks so far this year - but I reported 24 in the last 3 months of 2009. Maybe I'm just not traveling as far and wide anymore.

Falling apart at the seams

The furniture at some of our local bus stops is looking somewhat the worse for wear. Whilst the bus shelters have to put up with unnatural damage (vandalism), the outdoor seating is suffering from years of wear and tear from the elements. A lot of seating is starting to look like the one below, on Hampden Rd in Abbotsford.

The concrete frame is fine, but the wooden slats are rotten and splitting, and the bolts holding them on are rusting away.

The seat in the foreground is in pretty good condition - the photos above are of the seat in the background. Most bus stops also have a bin - many have been sprayed with graffiti, or show signs of having been set on fire (blistered paint that has peeled off, allowing the bin to rust).

Here we have an example of the new seating that Council installed when the Wareemba shopping strip was recently upgraded - it's a fine bit of furniture.

Replacing and repairing street furniture costs money - no doubt about it. However, I wonder how regularly the seating is being looked at by Council? I can handle shabby, so long as it's safe to sit on. However, some seating is starting to look like it is ready made for a personal injury lawsuit.

Tis the season for pot holes

The recent rains have had the side effect of mucking up our local roads. Pot holes have been opening up here and there, including this one on Barnstaple Road in Five Dock. If you bother reporting them to Council (which is as easy as sending them an email), they'll be fixed within a few days. If you don't bother reporting them, they'll still be there next winter.

Update - got a phone call from Council at 8.30am this morning. They said it will be fixed today.

See - all you have to do is ask, and not treat it as somebody else's problem.

Odd way of celebrating the New Year

Like many people, I spent the morning of Jan 1 cleaning up after the night before. Champagne corks, beer and wine bottles, streamers, sparklers, chop bones, paper plates, plastic forks and so forth were scattered all over the back yard. However, none of it was permanent, and all the mess was on private property. Others obviously have other ideas about how the evening should be marked....

Gay taggers only?

There is a small sign above the door of this garage that reads "blah-blah Rd gay taggers only".

We now have gay-friendly graffiti zones?

New graffiti advice on Energy Australia website

Energy Australia has put a link on their homepage to combatting graffiti. The downside of the new page is that they want all graffiti reports to be phoned in, which in my experience, is a pain in the backside. I can enter a report via their "contact us" web page in less than 30 seconds. It usually takes 5-10 minutes to do it over the phone (once you find their number, ring it, press this and that to get through all the prompts and then wait for an operator. On top of that, the hours of their call centre are limited - I generally find myself reporting graffiti at 10pm or later, and the call centre is closed at that time - and it's shut on Sunday.


I'm going to continue with using the web page, and see how things go.

Taking a break for the school holidays

The school holidays generally see a spike in vandalism, graffiti and malicious damage. An exception to this was the August holidays, which were wet and miserable. Two weeks of rain and cold weather kept the kids inside, and offered few opportunities to get out and about and cause a bit of mayhem.

The Christmas holidays have been different - nice hot weather for most of the time. The result has been a big spike in graffiti in most of the usual areas. I'm not going to bother with reporting any of it until the holidays are over - there is a good chance that if anything is cleaned over the holidays, it will be tagged before the little dears are back in the classroom. I am building up a nice file of sites to report, and unfortunately, it gets thicker by the day. Either we have grown a new crop of vandals, or the old ones have rediscovered their mojo.