Graffiti used to solicit Sex

Graffiti used to solicit sex from teens
Calgary HeraldPublished: Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Calgary man has admitted he wrote graffiti on a northeast park bench in an attempt to lure teenage girls to have sex with him.
Court heard Tyler Ernest Daniels, 28, wrote, "Need money? Teen girls for hire I pay $500.00 an hour ages 13-16 e-mail me . . ." then listed his address.
This message prompted a concerned citizen to contact police on May 17, 2006, according to an agreed statement of facts presented by defence lawyer Tonii Roulston and Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees.
Undercover officers, posing as a 16-year-old girl, contacted the e-mail address and asked for more information. They received a reply the same day from Daniels, asking where she lived and how old she was.
He also requested a picture.
The officers and Daniels corresponded several times during the next six weeks, with the officers continuing to pose as a 16-year-old girl.
Daniels offered $500 in exchange for sexual acts. He also promised he would arrange a hotel room and meet the teen there, and would provide drink, cigarettes or drugs.
He promised more money with increased time, in addition to gifts such as clothing and jewelry.
It was determined on June 2, 2006, the e-mails were coming from the same Internet provider address at the Calgary Public Library. Detectives were later able to confirm Daniels had been sending the e-mails.
Daniels arranged to meet the so-called teen on July 23 at a hotel and said he would give her $200 for sex, but the meeting never occurred. Daniels was arrested on Nov. 27 and charged.
Provincial court Judge Terry Semenuk will hear sentencing arguments on July 21.

We Drive pass it every day, Graffiti

We drive past it every day and don’t give it much more than a “tsk, tsk.”
Those strange, almost foreign looking splashes of spray paint. Graffiti.
You don’t have to drive far too come across it. Most municipal property have it somewhere, and many private businesses as well – the back of the local grocery store, the electrical box in the park, the pump house at the water reservoir, the sides of downtown businesses.
Schools, perhaps because of their very nature, are particularly hard-hit targets, and not just for graffiti. Broken windows and other malicious, senseless damage are also commonplace.
“Tsk, tsk.” It’s petty crime, small potatoes though, right? Well, think again. Simcoe County District School Board trustees learned this week that when it was all added up, vandalism to schools cost the board (and ultimately taxpayers) more than $1 million in 2006 and 2007, and will likely cost the same again this year.
Those are some pretty pricy small potatoes.
It’s a figure that made trustees decide to revisit the issue of installing security cameras at Simcoe County schools, and rightly so. And while the cameras might not end the problem outright, they certainly would be a deterrent and a good start.
One person’s art is another’s trash, and graffiti has been referred to as ‘street art.’ But even if it is, that doesn’t give the ‘artist’ the right to use any space, private or public, as a canvas.
Trustee Diane Firman said it best when she said schools and the board need to work with the entire community to deal with vandalism.
“It’s not a school problem, it’s not a police problem. It’s everyone’s problem.”
We all need to just stop treating it as small potatoes.

Penalize the Taggers not the Victims

To the editor:
Re: Penalize the perpetrators not the victims, Earl Brown letter, March 19.
I couldn't agree more with the title of Earl Brown's letter. Graffiti is not a victimless crime. It is an issue every municipality in the world has to contend with. It absorbs considerable resources and expenses, not just from the municipalities, but also from the victims of these senseless crimes.
The City of Oshawa, in confronting the problem of graffiti on boulevards, has had property standard bylaws in place since 2001. We also adopted a bylaw to deal with graffiti on private property in 2007. We routinely work with the Region of Durham, Canada Post, and Durham Transit (among others) to clean up graffiti on their infrastructure.
We are also working with Durham Transit on a couple of instances where graffiti incidents have occurred on private properties near bus stops. On more than one occasion, stop signs and mail boxes where graffiti was removed were revandalized within a week.
It is too much for any municipality to monitor every mailbox, stop sign or cable/phone box on a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week basis. Privacy laws actually impede the City's ability to clean up graffiti on private property.
That said, perpetrators do get caught. Recently during a joint blitz between the City's Special Enforcement Task Force and Durham Regional Police, a young person was arrested and convicted of graffiti.
That young offender has been sentenced through a restorative justice program to clean up graffiti throughout our city. The City of Oshawa cannot let graffiti degrade the beauty of our streets and properties. Leaving graffiti on private property not only affects that particular property but also diminishes the values of neighbouring properties. Our bylaws are designed to deal with graffiti as swiftly as it occurs for the protection of everyone's property investments.
Mayor John Gray
Oshawa

Legal Graffiti

Making light of graffiti
Kevin Griffin, Vancouver SunPublished: Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Downtown corporate office towers will be rebranded on Friday and Saturday night when a group of graffiti artists paint their 10-metre tall designs on the sides of buildings with light.
The non-destructive art form uses new open-source software called laser tagging. It allows artists to create real-time designs with light instead of Jiffy markers and spray cans.
Called NeoGraf, the digital graffiti performances will be taking place as part of Midforms and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. On both nights, the digital graffiti starts at about 8 p.m.

On Friday, artists Rhek and Virus will be doing laser tagging and over the course of several hours and they'll be moving to several locations in the downtown core. For the location details check http://2007.newformsfestival.com/neograf.
On Saturday, artists Neal Nolan and Adam Dodd will be creating more detailed and complex murals. The software allows artists to create different looks, ranging from standard, hard-edge graffiti to more painterly images.
NeoGraf is being brought to Vancouver by NomIg, a Montreal-based duo that investigates the relationships between audio and video.
Ed Jordan from NomIg said people are invited to drop by, watch, and participate on Friday.
"You'll see on Friday a crowd of people and some spontaneous drawing on walls. It'll look large and bright. You'll probably see someone drawing a stick man to people who will be doing some skilled patterns and drawing," Jordan said from Montreal.
"We'll probably have some music playing. These aren't already created images just being projected on a wall. This is about watching the creative process unfold."
Jordan said he came up with the Neografik Project as a way of reclaiming public space by filling it with art instead of corporate logos. The software for laser tagging was developed by new media artist Agent Watson in Amsterdam and the Graffiti Research Lab in Brooklyn, N.Y. NeoGraf is the most visible portion of Midforms, an annual multidisciplinary festival celebrating new technology and music.
Midforms also includes Dubforms, which explores dub and electronic music, on Friday, and TechForms, an electronic and ambient music event, on Saturday. Both are ticketed events that take place at 10 p.m. each night at Open Studios, 252 East 1st Avenue. n On Saturday at 1 p.m., a musical performance at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library will likely disrupt most people's attentions for at least an hour. Called the Vertical Orchestra, musicians from A Touch of Brass plus others will be blowing their horns and trombones in the library's atrium.
What makes this performance different from most other musical performances is that instead of all of the musicians performing together on the same horizontal surface, they'll be distributed throughout the seven floors of the atrium. With some of the musicians more than 100 metres apart from one another, they'll be able to hear each other but not see their fellow orchestra members.
Because of the distances involved, they will be using stopwatches to coordinate the performance. Jordan Nobles, co-artistic director of Redshift Music Society, which specializes in staging musical performances in unusual spaces, said what happens in a space such as the library's atrium is that people feel as if they're surrounded by the music rather than having it projected at them. He calls it spatial music.
For the the Vertical Orchestra, all of the musicians will be playing brass instruments. There will be two French horns, two tubas, four trumpets and four trombones.
"There's going to be a lot of music in there," Nobles said.
"It'll fill the room with a series of immersive sounds coming at you from different angles. It's going to be big."
Saturday's performance will be the fourth concert organized by Redshift in the library's atrium.
"You get to walk around, have a coffee, and experience music in a different setting," he said.
"The audience reaction has been great."
The five pieces being performed Saturday by the Vertical Orchestra will all be works created by B.C. composers.
Also being held as part of the Cultural Olympiad and the Robson Reading Series are two readings by Canadian authors. Montreal resident Rawi Hage is the author of the novel DeNiro's Game. Born in Beirut, he lived through the nine-year civil war before emigrating to Canada. He'll be reading today at 3 p.m. at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre - the new main library - at the University of B.C.
On Tuesday at 7 p.m., author Wayson Choy will be giving a reading at Robson Square. Choy, who grew up in Chinatown, is the author of multiple award-winner novel The Jade Peony. His latest novel is All that Matters, which was nominated for the Giller Prize. A full listing of all Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad events that run to March 21 is available at www.vancouver2010.com/culturalolympiad. A free, 124-page guide is also available at participating venues.

Graffiti Taggers Rile Truckers

Graffiti 'artists' rile truckers
David Menzies, National Post Published: Friday, February 29, 2008
David MenziesGrafitti was once confined to downtown back alleys and the odd railroad car, but vandals are increasingly turning their attention to trucks
David Contant is a proponent of free speech and freedom of expression. And, like so many others, he appreciates fine art. But the Burlington, Ont.-based trucker was far from amused recently when he discovered that a budding artist/social activist/vandal decided his truck would be an ideal canvas for a cryptic message delivered via a can of spray paint.
Contant is the latest trucker to be victimized by graffiti "artists" who have decided that trucks, cube vans and other large vehicles make for good targets when it comes to displaying their horrendous handiwork. Indeed, whereas graffiti was once confined to downtown back alleys and the odd railroad car, a growing trend has emerged wherein vandals are turning their attention to the world of wheels.
Contant says he wouldn't have minded if his truck had been tagged by someone painting, say, a replica of the Mona Lisa on his rig. But, like the vast majority of urban graffiti blight, the supposed artwork is merely a mishmash of gibberish that could've been administered by a chimpanzee wearing a blindfold.
"It's a real eyesore," says Contant. "And I have no idea what it's supposed to be."
While the graffiti on his truck likely represented a few minutes of mindless fun for the vandals, it is Contant who must live with the end result. Understandably, he's far from pleased.
"It's a little embarrassing for me to make deliveries now," he says, noting that he ships high-end fine furniture to the homes of customers. "When I roll up on somebody's driveway with a truck looking the way it does now, it doesn't look good for me or for the company."
David Bradley, president of the Ontario Trucking Association, notes that graffiti artists targeting trucks was something of a rarity just a decade ago. But, in recent years, he says, "truck tagging" has become increasingly commonplace-- even if the reason behind the onslaught is unknown.
"I'm seeing it [graffiti on trucks] all the time-- there are trucks on the road that look like New York subway cars," says Bradley. "I think there are people out there who have absolutely no respect for the property of others. It's just the way society is going these days."
Bradley says the attention by vandals is completely unwanted. Many truckers take pride in how their rigs look, and to see their vehicles "desecrated" in such a fashion is "very frustrating for them ... especially if there's something obscene painted on the truck."
Meanwhile, as the trucker goes about his business, his rig becomes a source of visual pollution to everyone else. More than an annoyance and an eyesore, unwanted graffiti can be damaging to the bottom line.
Mike Haydeman, who heads up Canadian Restorations GTA Inc., a Toronto-based graffiti-removal company, says eradicating graffiti isn't cheap. "When I tell [truckers] how much it's going to be, I then tell them to go to a paint shop and get the graffiti painted over," he says, noting that graffiti removal ranges from $200 for "a small job" to more than $1,000 "depending on the amount that has to be treated."
A basic paint job to cover up graffiti, Haydeman says, can be had for as little as $400. Another problem, he says, is that, when graffiti is removed from a vehicle, the clearcoat surface is sometimes also removed. This could result in the paint eventually fading and chipping.
Still, Haydeman says there is another way to fight back against unwanted graffiti. His company markets a "pre-emptive solution" for graffiti pests: namely, a "graffiti barrier" comprised of a polymer-based coating solution. Such a coating is a graffiti artist's worst nightmare.
"Spray paint will adhere to the coating, but the paint comes off with a citrus spray that you apply later on -- it [spray paint] literally melts in front of your eyes," he says.
The coating costs $1,500 for a cube van and $4,000 to $5,000 for a rig's trailer.
As for the reason behind targeting big vehicles with graffiti, Haydeman theorizes that trucks and cube vans tend to be parked in alleys or in lots far from prying eyes. "I think they are an irresistible target for vandals -- a truck is a very big canvas for them," he says.
And because trucks are mobile, the graffiti artist's handiwork is exposed to a huge audience as the trucker does his rounds.
"You and I may not understand all that gibberish," says Haydeman, "but the vandals' peers understand it."

Frustrated by Graffiti

By FRANK LANDRY, CITY HALL BUREAU
Frustrated with the amount of graffiti in Edmonton, a city councillor is calling for a crackdown on those doing the tagging.
Coun. Tony Caterina yesterday suggested the city send teams of bylaw enforcement officers or police out at night to track down spray-can vandals.
He suggested the sting could be done over a month.
"We need to send a message out to the people doing this that it's not acceptable," Caterina said.
Caterina's idea is based on a similar crackdown in Strathcona County, where a task force of up to 10 Mounties, dubbed Operation Wipeout, was set up last year.
Strathcona RCMP Const. Darren Anderson said the program ran for two months, resulting in about 100 charges, mostly related to graffiti.
"We had great success in a very short period of time," said Anderson.
In Edmonton, the city plans to launch an aggressive campaign in April to create "graffiti-free zones" in six neighbourhoods - using a much different approach.
It would be part of the ongoing Capital City Clean-up campaign.
Don Belanger, who's running the program, said the city will remove graffiti from the walls of buildings in the six areas once at no charge.
In return, the owners of the buildings will be asked to keep them free of graffiti for a year. The same model is expected to be expanded to other parts of the city the following year, Belanger said.
Also yesterday, city council approved a bylaw that will allow officials to ticket anyone who refuses to remove graffiti. The fine will be $250.
Belanger stressed that would be a last resort.
"It's to the point where really you need to be more forceful on it," said Mayor Stephen Mandel of the new fine.
"It's a growing problem and one we need to deal with."
But Caterina said he doesn't agree with building owners being charged for something they didn't cause.
"The onus is on us to come up with something where we prosecute, arrest or fine the people actually doing it," he said, suggesting that may call for a new bylaw.
However, spraying graffiti is a mischief offence under the Criminal Code, said David Aitken, director of complaints and investigations. Such charges cannot be laid by the city's enforcement officers, he said.
The city's six graffiti-free zones are Stony Plain Road, Alberta Avenue, downtown, Inglewood, Old Strathcona, and part of Mill Woods yet to be decided, said Belanger.
Meanwhile, council yesterday passed bylaw changes - effective April 1 - that puts the onus on property owners to keep adjacent boulevards free of litter. The fine for failing to do that is $250.