Hacker News Reader

Comment by toephu2 | Hacker News Reader

For a small business owner, graffiti is an unconsented, recurring tax that provides zero ROI for the neighborhood. In SF if you own a business that gets tagged, you have X number of days to clean it up yourself otherwise YOU get fined.. the city does nothing to go after the criminals. They only go after law-abiding tax paying citizens cause that's where the money is.

View on HN

The city does go after the people illegally tagging properties: https://sfstandard.com/2024/10/17/san-francisco-prolific-gra...

https://sfdistrictattorney.org/prolific-tagger-charged-with-...

https://sfist.com/2016/01/25/prolific_tagger_fined_over_200k...

Many more results if you search for “prolific tagger San Francisco”.

To be fair, not all graffiti on this site is non-consensual. For instance Jeremy Novy's koi fish. After living in Soma for time, everything else was a recurring pain mostly in terms of time I had to spend on it.

By definition graffiti is non consensual. If there is consent then it is a mural.

Regulating otherwise legal non-commercial speech on someone's own property is insane and sounds unconstitutional. If you want it there, or want it gone, that should be your own prerogative.

Your comment motivated me to read the way SF frames their regulation:

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...

> Graffiti. "Graffiti" means any inscription, word, figure, marking, or design that is affixed, applied, marked, etched, scratched, drawn, or painted on any building, structure, […examples…], without the consent of the owner of the property or the owner's authorized agent, and which is visible from the public right-of-way […variations…]

> It shall be unlawful for the owner of any real property within the City bearing graffiti to allow the graffiti to remain on the property in violation of this Article 23.

…surely they’ve thought of it already, but it does seem like that would make “yeah, but I said it was fine” a viable way out of that particular ticket, no?

I am sympathetic to the way they frame their motivations: it’s not the speech itself they say they’re regulating, it’s the way your neglect signals impunity, encourages more of it, and degrades the quality of your neighbors’ lives (and property). That and gang stuff.

Yeah that sounds basically impossible to prove since the onus is on them to prove the negative that you never consented to it, but my guess is since it's a civil ticket it goes through some kangaroo court where you are fucked from the get go and the judge is basically the 21st century equivalent of a red-coat.

Owner's authorized agent sounds like a court would expect to see some sort of paperwork authorizing the placement of the graffiti. So when you say I told them it was ok the burden of proof falls on you that you did.

No idea about SF, but a few years ago a group painted most of the Rolling security shutters in the business in a street near my home in Buenos Aires https://www.google.com/maps/place/Uruguay+224,+C1015ABF+ABF,...

Most were nice, and some of them still survive, but a lot seem to be over painted. (It would be nice to see a image at night or Sunday, when most business are closed. Some may be still there but rolled up while the business is open.)

Anyway, I don't expect a formal paperwork, just a handshake an an oral agreement.

I think you're overthinking it. I think overwhelming majority of people don't want that crap over their streets. It would be an easy 80+% issue for a politician to pick up so most places have laws that say don't have that ugly crap everywhere. Hence you see the value of neighborhoods with a lot of graffiti and considerably lower than those that don't

Is graffiti causing those neighborhood's value to drop or are businesses and individuals residing in cheaper neighborhoods less equipped to cover the ongoing maintenance costs of removing the ever-recurring graffiti?

There are literally dozens of local ordinances in SF that are blatantly unconstitutional. The issue is that nobody wants to actually pursue they to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, just for a court to eventually say “okay, you’re right.”

you should not get fined and it should not be a crime to graffiti

If somebody tagged your car, would you be upset about it?

I think it’s fair to say the blank wall of a store is different to someone’s personal car. I am not mad about people tagging commercial walls, and I would be if someone tagged my car. Thankfully no one ever does that because they share a common agreement on this.

> I think it’s fair to say the blank wall of a store is different to someone’s personal car.

I don't. Especially if it's my store. I've never heard a businessman not be angry if his place of business was vandalized.

I bet you'd be angry if your house or your fence was tagged.

Again it depends what it is. If someone tagged my bin out the front I wouldn’t care in the slightest. If they tagged a brick wall siding an alley or train line I wouldn’t care. If they jumped the fence, walked through the yard and tagged my window I would care.

So you do care about it. And that's perfectly natural.

just over a month ago I had my car broken into and nearly everything in the backseat was stolen. I was for sure upset but I never called the cops over it.

This site scrapes the city efforts to document who is doing "how much" damage/art.

Once they catch an artist in the act, they will use these archives to recommend a punishment.

But your point in valid - San Francisco likes graffiti.

Did he argue SF likes graffiti? I don't think he does, and the people living in the city certainly don't. These are criminals tagging buildings, and city officials who either don't care or are too busy with other things. I'm not aware of anyone who actually lives there who likes graffiti, and logically there's no reason anyone should. If someone wanted a mural they would have hired a real artist to do it.

He's arguing that the authorities aren't doing anything about it, and the reason is, (going out on a limb here) SF residents are sympathetic to the renegade artistic expression argument.

> SF residents are sympathetic to the renegade artistic expression argument.

SF residents are incredibly snobby when it comes to street art. The typical tagging, 2 minute stencil sprays, and so forth are not up to posh standards of SF residents. I don't think most SFers think those are "renegade artistic expression". Maybe some of folks in Berkeley would but not SF.

There's a huge disconnect from the city residents and a lot of what happens by the government. SFPD is a prime example of this. Almost none of the cops live in SF. A lot of the people committing crime also don't live in SF. It's a weird city.

" Almost none of the cops live in SF. A lot of the people committing crime also don't live in SF "

any more

"It's a weird city." I think you're just seeing the transition US cities made in the 2000s from the location of the have-nots to the haves.

But not sympathetic to corporate expression via renegade spray-painting. (Justin Bieber, now ASAP Rocky)

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-city-attorney-goi...

Hated this shit in NYC too. It's a fucking blight. Nothing but people spray painting their IG handles trying to become a clout goblin.

Ads everywhere. Can't even look down.

I've lived through this whole epidemic, I remember seeing the origional modern Grafitti guy's work all over North Philly on my way to the doctor in the mid 1970s. That guy's name was CornBread. The artful mural like tagging origionating in the Bronx is another story but there have always been a-holes who tag some scribble over other stuff.

I think there should be distinction between tagging and graffiti

Yes, I'm old enough to remember CornBread's scribbles all over North Philly in the 70's. I think he started the modern scribble tag.

An authorized painting on a wall is called a mural

Reply on news.ycombinator.com