By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
One of the blessings those of you living in the rural delights of Highland County experience is a relatively low exposure to graffiti. Often seen on train cars, Highland County’s low exposure to railroads keeps this scourge at bay. Yes, it shows up elsewhere, but nothing like it does in the metropolitan areas.
The origins of modern graffiti exposure comes from the 1960s when paint in aerosol cans became widely available. The U.S. aerosol paint market size is somewhere around $1.1 billion per year. How much of that goes into graffiti is unknown. According to Arizona State University, the cost of graffiti cleanup is estimated at $12 billion per year in the U.S.: “Graffiti contributes to lost revenue associated with reduced ridership on transit systems, reduced retail sales and declines in property value.”
Have you ever thought about the efforts that graffiti “artists” go through to deface property? The cost of the aerosol cans is just the start. They have to think about their “art” (admittedly some of it is very good) and where they are going to apply it. They then have to think about trespassing and defiling someone else’s property. I suspect their thoughts on these subjects are just the consideration of the consequences of getting caught.
Graffiti applied high in the air requires some thinking about fear of heights (I am thinking about some classmates from decades ago and the water tower across the street from the old Hillsboro High School).
In Atlanta, they crawl out on the directional signs over the expressways, which include not only the hazard of falling but also the danger of being hit by cars and trucks below.
I once tried to start a movement in paper mills, my home turf, to not accept rail cars for loading that were covered with graffiti. The typical shipping manager response to this was “Are you crazy, we have enough trouble getting empties as it is!”
I can’t decide if graffiti “artists” are driven to express their “art,” angry at the world, or just bored. No matter their motive, I think they are doing us all a disservice and creating an unpleasant world in which to live.
We went through the phase a few years ago, where gangs of people were defacing statutes to the point the statutes were removed. I had thought, years earlier, when visiting Civil War battlefields that this is the only country I know where the losers were allowed to erect statutes to their heroes. It should have been expected that this would eventually lead to problems.
The graffiti sprayers here were definitely angry and effective – most of those statutes have been removed. I would go a bit further, though, and suggest they were also lazy because there are still many objects that meet the criteria of their wrath, they just happen to be far flung and in out-of-the-way places.
If you haven’t been able to tell by now, graffiti depresses me and sends a signal to me that there are people who have little regard for the looks of our country. Graffiti is not beautiful and adds to the general malaise in our country.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
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