(03-08-2023, 12:34 PM)Acitta Wrote:(03-08-2023, 08:07 AM)ac3r Wrote: Spray paint at least isn't a big deal. They should have just left it instead of wasting the money replacing entire benches. Spray paint on stuff is part of living in a city.
Vandaizing a sign like in the picture is scummy though.
They were fucking brand new! Would you tolerate it if it was something on your property that you spent a lot of money on? We spend municipal tax money to install beautiful infrastructure only to have it ruined by ignorant assholes. Why should we tolerate that? These people should be locked in stocks in a public square!
Quite an extreme desire of public violence you wish to see but okay.
It's simply a colossal waste of money. Why spend thousands - likely well over $10'000 in new benches and labour - replacing something you know is going to get tagged once again? It's like how we waste thousands of dollars a year on grey paint and labour costs to buff city/regional walls only for them to get tagged within a week, just to crack open a new can of grey paint and send a crew out so soon. Half the time that stuff doesn't match and the walls end up looking like some shitty Rothko painting although, at the same time, buffing of graffiti becomes a subconscious form of abstract art in and of itself). Just gives the artists free canvas as well.
A lot of graffiti sucks, sure, but it's a futile battle. And I think it gives cities charm. Set foot in any European city or town and it's everywhere. World class cities like London, Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Milan and so on are covered in the stuff, both good and bad. Every single surface gets hit with it and unless it's something important (a subway car, the front of some government building, public art) it's left alone. They don't try to fight it most of the time because they have better, more important things to spend tax dollars on. It's like trying to stop a bleeding artery with a bandage from a dollar store.
If you hate it and want to see it gone that's fine, but I don't think it's worth a single cent to fight unless it's in a place (or has offensive content) where it warrants removal. A bench still works whether there is paint on it or not.