In May 2003, Mayor Martin J. Chávez was joined in the field by the City of Albuquerque's duly praised Graffiti Removal Team to report on the division's success and to officially reveal the team's newly designed logo. As of this date, the City has successfully prosecuted and collected restitution from many graffiti vandals and has been nationally recognized as a best practice among cities for addressing community nuisances, such as graffiti. Mayor Chávez then participated in the painting of the "tagged" sites near Central and Old Coors. The mayor urges Albuquerque citizens to help out this summer in his effort to rid our community of graffiti by reporting it. If you see graffiti in your neighborhood, please call 311. A crew will be dispatched within 24 hours.

I thought the graffiti project, and the discussions in class about graffiti and the Splasher were pretty interesting. I spent much of my growing-up years in Albuquerque, and the graffiti connotation there is definitely different than, say, NYC, or even downtown Seattle. When I was living there it was almost always gang-related, and the graffiti was more of a tagging exercise than an artistic one. But it looks like Albuquerque is cleaning up its act. I think it's interesting that the "graffiti technician" takes pictures of some of the graffiti before he removes it, and recognizes the artistic value. It reminds of both the spoof on graffiti removal we watched in class, and the graffiti projects.