U Street is mostly deserted when Aceba Broadus and his three-person crew from the District of Columbia's Department of Public Works start setting up shop before 8am at one of DC's perennial graffiti hot spots. They tap a hydrant to fill the 275-gallon tank in their truck and get to work—coating graffiti-covered walls with a special chemical and then blasting them with high-pressure water. The work progresses quickly, but Broadus holds few illusions that their efforts will last long. "Come back on Friday and it will be all retagged again," he said on a Tuesday. "It's definitely a bit frustrating." Across town, Eric B. Ricks is engaged in his own graffiti project. Using a scissor lift, Ricks applies a coat of primer to the wall of Savoy Elementary School in preparation for what will become a city-sponsored mural of geometric patterns and multicolored birds.
"Graffiti is different for every practitioner of the craft," said Ricks, a longtime graffiti artist. "It's like a hydra, this multiheaded thing that's many things to many people. Graffiti in its purest form is like a flower growing out of filth and muck." This eye-of-the-beholder dynamic between vandalism and urban art form has been a reality since the earliest days of graffiti: One person's artistic expression is another's problematic eyesore. At any given time, there are three DPW removal teams working to remove it, and the city budgets $550,000 per year for the task, per the AP. The district contends with political graffiti often left by the frequent mass protests that are drawn to the nation's capital. But mostly it's tagging, the distinctive stylized bubble-letter signatures that can be seen on hundreds of buildings and all along the Metro train lines.
The city houses multiple graffiti-removal crews. In addition to the DPW, the city's Department of General Services removes graffiti from city government buildings and schools. The National Park Service handles anything on NPS land, and Metro has its own crews working along the train lines, while graffiti on federal government buildings is handled by the General Services Administration and different federal landholding agencies. The city's primary official vehicle for supporting graffiti, meanwhile, is the MuralsDC program, which has sponsored 165 murals around the city and pays artists like Ricks between $30 and $40 per square foot for their work. "In time, you can become as precise with a spray can as a surgeon with a scalpel," Ricks said. "This thing is by the people for the people. You can't put it in a box." More here.
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