Last summer I worked down at Leuty Station in the Beaches. One morning I showed up for work and noticed that someone had tagged the historical lifeguard station with an inappropriate choice of words. Within a few hours Community 55 was all over it with buckets of water and cleaning products.
Our staff was under the impression these kids were locals who’d gotten in trouble recently and were paying their dues in community service, but as it turns out this was their summer job.
Community 55 is located at 97 Main Street, and covers the area of Coxwell to Victoria Park and from Danforth down to the water. They receive a grant every summer from the City to hire a small group, usually between four to six teenagers, to clean up graffiti tags in the area. Cameron Boyle, who works at Community 55, says the program has been running for 12 summers.
The program is called the Graffiti Removal and Information Program, or GRIP, and last summer the group of four teenagers covered a total of 8,200 square feet of graffiti. Cameron says every summer they try to hire teenagers who’ve gotten into trouble previously for tagging to demonstrate the time and effort required to remove similar handiwork.
Now I’m all for giving teenagers jobs and keeping them off the streets, except that, according to Lainey Anderson of Community 55, the program removes all graffiti, and doesn’t make the distinction between artful graffiti and selfish tagging. She says the staff are told to remove any graffiti that wasn’t authorized by the property owner, regardless of the talent behind it, because the property owner risks receiving a fine from the City for having an illegal mural.
In theory, Beaches store owners could wake up one day to find that someone has painted a beautiful image on the side of their property, but would have to have it removed, regardless of whether they enjoy it or not, or can even afford it. Lainey says the only option would be to make an application for a permit to showcase the work as public art.
The GRIP program is available to both businesses and private dwellings but isn’t free. The cost of removal is donation-based and usually depends on the size of the job, Cameron says, with donations ranging from $5 to $100.
15 comments
Why does the city require a permit for public art (particularly if it’s on private property)? Do they require that the content of a mural be approved beforehand?
I would be more inclined to get worried about artful graffiti getting lost along with selfish tagging, when I actually see some artful graffiti amongst the selfish tagging.
I moved down to the Beach a little over 3 years ago, and the tagging seems to have gotten progressively worse every year.
I’m not sure the article is completely accurate. The bylaw (http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/municode/1184_485.pdf) states that an owner may appeal an infraction on the grounds that the graffiti is actually a mural, which is specifically exempted.
And meanwhile, could a graffiti bylaw officer please visit Joe Pantalone’s ward to do something about the graffiti strewn all over the municipal playgrounds and street signs?
Could we please get them to remove the InfoToGo pillar at Kew Gardens? It’s far more offensive than any tag imaginable. I’ll make a significant donation.
Those pillars, no matter how garish they are, are not worse than tags.
Julie … your article needs a healthy dose of reality.
The number of beautiful murals in danger of being removed in the beach is next to none. While mindless tagging of anything and everything in the beach has become a serious and growing problem.
There are tags everywhere. On trees, On big rocks along the boardwalk. On the signs in Kew Gardens. On the front of condo buildings. Houses have been tagged. Elementary schools have been tagged. And the VAST majority of these tags are poor scribbles that offer nothing in terms of ‘artful’ value to the community. In many cases – like when rocks and trees are tagged – they are rarely fully restored.
Mr K >>
Julie never wrote anything that tags were nice. There is graffiti that goes up that is nice that is not authorized was all that she said positively about graffiti. She presented some reality because there are a number of stores along Queen W who have legitimate murals that have been fined by the City. That is part of the reality and grey area of graffiti.
Even worse there seems to be an increase of etched tags in the city in recent weeks. Particularly on the TTC. People have gone as far to use something sharp to etch their tags into the tempered glass subway windows, or even the huge windows of Old Mill Station.
Those can’t be removed by cleaning or painting. The window has to be replaced, which is obviously very expensive.
There seems to be an ever growing culture of kids who think that tagging is cool. I still fully support groups like this. Not just because they are cleaning up the graffiti, but they are involving kids who at one time may have been responsible (which may in turn help slow or stop the tagging sub culture that seems to be increasing in size)
I completely agree, Julie, and this almost makes me want to visit the Beaches to see if there is that “unintentional art” left behind from graffiti cleanup. I disagree with k, too, because I can think of a dozen beautiful murals I’ve seen in the Beaches and I hope they’re not gone.
Well, if you’ve got a problem with this don’t call Councillor Bussin as she has been known to tell people to mind their own business (like in connection with the out of the cold shelter in that Queen East church)
This page gives a phone number – perhaps they can explain whether murals are deemed graffiti.
http://www.centre55.com/programs_grip.htm
Where are these dozen or so beautiful murals in the beaches that are in danger of being erased?
@glo … I never implied that Julie was saying tags were nice. But I do question her focus here.
There is a serious and growing graffiti problem in the beach right now and a very minor potential threat of beautiful graffiti being removed. And yet Julie’s article doesn’t even mention the scope of the graffiti problem to give readers some sort of context.
I wish we had something like that in High Park. I walked through the park yesterday and was dismayed to see that the tagging problem was much worse than a few months ago. It seemed that every monument, sign and building was defaced in some way.
I would like to catch the upper class kids who do this shit in the beaches and pull a Sean Penn out of “Colors”. I would spray paint or carve MY tag nto their wussy heads.
Believe me, I have lived in Scarborough and the Beach for a long time and I have seen these punks. They mostly come from wealthier homes and they go out an mar the property of those who don’t have trust funds and daddy buying them a car or education.
It is the parents of these slime we should be going after. they coddle their little bastards and defend them instead of whupping their asses. An example is the “Facebook” brouhaha. Parents were out there cheering their kids while they pelted police with bottles.
I have chased these kids because they don’t fear the police. I see them in Igor Forrest parkette smoking weed ad drinking and they ignore or mouth off to the police. They do however, fear an ass-kicking
I always thought the perfect punishment was to catch these tagging pukes, do nothing for 20-30 years except note when they buy a home or car and then cover it with tags to see how they appreciate some idiot crapping up what they own.
The mural makers are also under the impression that they are allowed to paint where they like because they are artists. Respect the law and don’t inflict your artistic ideas on people unless you wish to pay for a venue in order to show your work. No pay, no say. If you’re so hot to do art then ask for permission. You just have to start suffering for your art. And should I catch you, well, suffer you will.