Thanks!

If you’re a resident of 5th Avenue, you may be lucky enough to wake up to some fresh paint on your building - for free. It appears that some great kids, hearts clearly in the right place, were guided by a few adults with very questionable judgement. As I was taking my morning stroll I noticed the group making their way down 5th Avenue picking up litter. When they came upon any evidence of graffiti, they stopped and quickly covered the blemish with silver paint. I first saw them address a barely visible, faded outline on the metal security door of a restaurant. Problem was, the graffiti had pretty much already been removed and the fresh shiny silver paint did not match the flat grey of the existing paint.

Hmm. Was this what the owners wanted? My question was soon answered. Not likely. As the group made their way down the block, without any pause or attempt to contact or consult an occupant of each property, they painted thick hasty strokes of metallic silver over any graffiti, on any building surface - no matter what color the brick or brownstone may have been (rarely silver). The building across from mine (rather derelict I’ll admit) received the ultra premium treatment. A visit to the website of the organization claiming responsibility for this service (see the sign), Park Slope Civic Council, revealed that today was indeed Spring Civic Sweep 2011, and that their volunteers would “paint graffiti off lampposts.” Apparently communication broke down somewhere along the way. Below you can see the, uh, careful job they did sprucing up one particular property.

They probably didn’t want to look out of that window anymore anyway. More images from their trail of destruction: