Brickbat: Forget It, Jake…

In Oakland, California's Chinatown neighborhood, business owners are facing thousands of dollars in fines from the city for graffiti on their properties. Shirley Luo, manager of Won Kee Supermarket, owes $3,000—including late fees—for not cleaning up graffiti fast enough. Despite efforts to paint over the tags, taggers keep returning, leaving merchants feeling unfairly penalized as victims of vandalism they can't control. The city requires property owners to remove graffiti quickly, calling it a public nuisance, but offers no financial help. Local leaders, including the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council, are pushing the city to focus on catching taggers instead of fining businesses.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

Tell the city the graffiti is art protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act.

[Minadin]

Sure, if you want them to go from forcing you to remove it, to preventing you from removing it.

[SQRLSY]

I am SHOCKED to learn that Government Almighty loves to PUNISH the people (the WRONG people quite often) by taking their money!

Whoa, this sounds like tariff-taxes to me! And I don't even pretend to know WHY I am being punished!

[jimc5499]

Back in the 80's the City of Pittsburgh was fining restaurants for violations of the ADA because they were not wheelchair accessible. Several restaurants installed wheelchair ramps in the back and had accessible seating neat the Kitchen. This was deemed unacceptable because it made the handicapped look like second class citizens. The restaurants applied for permits to install ramps in front, but, these were denied by the City, so they just included the $750 per day fine in their overhead.

[Fist of Etiquette]

WHO IS JAKE???

Just kidding. I get the reference.

[rbike]

Where are the defenders of free speech here? Yoohoo, Jeffy!!!
Those taggers have rights, you know. It is the first amendment after all.

[mad.casual]

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your your graffiti fines, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: 'Have ya paid your graffiti fines, Jack?' 'Yessir, the check is in the mail.'

[Medulla Oblongata]

I never drive faster than I can see.

[шинка]

Graffiti is protected speech.

Fight insanity with insanity.

[AT]

Local leaders, including the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council, are pushing the city to focus on catching taggers instead of fining businesses.

Maybe they should push their own focus to beating taggers within an inch of their life, and then wisping away like Batman. After which, the only thing that remains is a guy in dire need of a hospital surrounded by a bunch of krylon cans.

[Don't look at me! (Tariffs are killing the penguin industry!)]

Catching the taggers would destroy an income stream. Why would the city want to do that?

[Eeyore]

Paint and ink might be the only revenue Walgreens has left.

[Rick James]

Let's just go back to sitting on the sidelines of the culture war. At least we're relegating this stuff to a brickbat.

[Vesicant]

The fact that there are no Chinese on the city council is just one of those weird coincidences.