War between a Graffiti painter and cleanup crew, cheap chuckle.

I saw this earlier and it made me chuckle.
It is an animated gif in time lapse, showing the responses between the person doing the graffiti and the clean up crew.
Maybe I'm rather childish sometimes but I did find it funny as it reminded me of a summer job I did years ago painting over all local council owned buildings and walls in Tourist areas. Everything was white emulsion so I just had my rollers and brushes, lots of white paint, and a tiny little van to drive round in.

It was a full on game for me as well as those who painted, and although I never met any of the folk I competed with, there was interaction between us in places tourists wouldn't normally see. They would write stuff like "Let's see how good at your job you are" I would paint over with white then write "Pretty good" with a smiley, close by using a marker pen.

Another time I found some lovely visual art hidden out of the way with "How much do you believe in your job?" and I replied by framing the work with a neat white border. It was lovely work, I just couldn't bring myself to cover it, and my white border was a message back to the artist.
After that there was a massive drop in the graffiti in 'easy for the public to see places' and a rise in places where senior council management never visited.
We found a mutually agreeable arrangement it seemed.

...anyway, I'm rambling now but I did find the exchange/war in the link amusing.
The animated gif appeared to be too big for me to upload on ATS, I did try, so apologies.

a reply to: grainofsand

I must admit I was grinning from ear to ear while watching the interaction and creativity of 2 "teams" who are fated to cross paths, albeit probably without ever seeing each other. Oneupmanship at its finest. The "What about this then?" was priceless! Thanks for sharing.

a reply to: grainofsand
That is very cool and also a great lesson for any government types out there in ATS. Learn to work within permissible boundaries and the amount of resistance decreases exponentially….

Thanks for sharing!

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

It is a decent chuckle isn't it.
I believe it to be real and not photoshopped because of my own experiences as a 'painter over' council Summer worker many years ago.
Never seen that interaction in time lapse through the medium of paint since that Summer, until today in that gif, proper made me chuckle and brought back funny memories.

That was very funny want say hilarious and I just did thanks to predictive text. I remember when graffiti was mostly political words and then came the tagging which I hate. I love artistic bombings and murals. If a place is tagged a lot pay an artist or some will do it for free if you supply the paint , get them to create a great artwork and the taggers usually respect the work and reduce tagging. But that was so funny perhaps I will try it somewhere dull and boring.

originally posted by: notmyrealname
Learn to work within permissible boundaries and the amount of resistance decreases exponentially….

I've worked in various arms of government employment in my life, from 'painter over' in the OP to signing decisions on behalf of a Secretary of State.
I have always bent rules where I could see it helped with community/authority cohesion.

a reply to: grainofsand

Well, at least you can always say you lived a colourful life! I, on the other hand....

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

Haha no, the only colour paint I was issued with was white!

RED

That similar to the stuff Banksy used to do
Example

Great story, good on you. I've dealt with something similar as well. I was a set painter for the motion picture industry.
When we did location work especially the alley at 5th and LA St. in downtown LA, we would sometimes have to paint over gang insignia or anything else they didn't want in a shot. We would paint over it and when we came back the next day it would be right back up and we would paint over it again. It became a game of tag at times. I always got a chuckle out of it anyway.

Some of the commissioned work is amazing. In France they have Trompe-l-oeil art, which are 3D paintings applied on indoor and outdoor walls. I've seen entire side of buildings painted in this way. Otherwise they would have just been dead boring whitewashed walls:

2.lushome.com...

www.trompe-l-oeil-art.com...

trstil.com...

I'm not sure if this one counts, the artists painted their art onto clingfilm suspended between steel beams:

i2.cdn.turner.com...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187338/Off-wall-The-astonishinwww.dailymail.co.uk... nted-sides-buildings-trompe-loeil-artist.htmlg-3D-murals-painted-sides-buildings-trompe-loeil-artist.html

a reply to: grainofsand
Nice to know some of you folks still exist.

Yes, quite funny.

However, graffiti is often an affront and cleaning it up is costly. Just think of the amount of money spent to clean up after this little joke.

Cheers for all the interesting replies folks star for everyone, and I apologise only paraphi wins the reply this evening as I'm proper beat after work, and he had the last word...


a reply to: paraphi
If the clean-up team are employed by the council anyway then there is certainly a cost of materials/paint/products/etc, but the wage bill is likely to be the same.

Keeps people in quick to learn, not so skilled work as well (as I was happy when doing the same many years ago as a skint student), same with litter for the council pickers who I have absolute respect for, looked down at by some people, but I always say thanks for doing a brilliant job when I see one working hard.
Spoke to one last week in the high street, he had picked every single cigarette stub on the pavement I was walking until I caught up with him, excellent job and I told him his hard work made me much less pissed off paying my council tax.

The guy smiled like he didn't hear it that often, he clearly had impaired learning/communication development of some diagnosis, but was sharp as a hawk with his grabby-stick-picker-upper-thing, fastidious even. I was impressed.
But lets be honest, outside of local government which follows discrimination and employment rules much more than private business does, the guy would struggle to find work if he got laid off.

So, although I do not litter myself, it is good there is enough litter around to keep that guy in a job.

I suppose the biggest difference with cleaning up graffiti is the resources paint/chemicals/etc, but I'm sure all the UK suppliers with contracts for councils are happy with graffiti, as are their employees.
The wider picture is an interesting one for sure when looking at the whole economy.