Clean Up Davis Square

[cleanup-davissq.livejournal.com]

Davis Square is a great place to live.

Lately though it seems to have gotten a little shabby with an increase in littering and graffiti.

 

I'd love to meet up with a few people on a weekend morning (or covertly late at night!) and repaint graffiti on trashcans and doorways, pick up litter, plant flower seeds...whatever it takes to bring a nicer, cleaner environment to where we live.

The city doesn't seem to have the will so let's take the initiative.

 

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Comments

There's graffiti and then there's graffiti...

[turil.livejournal.com]

"My little brother takes pains to find and point out the plaque his uncle made for the Davis Square T stop, every time we go though there. That sort of public art is the type where the artist is proudly saying, "I'm a part of this community!"

Now that's what I'm talking about!

There's a cool organization in Portland, Oregon called City Repair (http://www.cityrepair.org/ir.html) that encourages communities to improve their streets with fun, and personalized stuff like pavement painting, sculpture, street gardens, community kiosks, and tea stands. I've been to a couple of these intersections and they are amazing. They are like mini-Art Beats all the time. Crime nearly disappears. Neighbors are more neighborly. And traffic slows down to a safe and livible pace. I'd love to see something like that in Somerville. I think we even have the right sorts of mixed, fun communities for it. I just wish I, myself, had the organizing a social skills to pull it off!

"Graffiti, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of community-oriented. Graffiti is a single person, or a gang, attempting to make the claim, "This space is mine! All MINE!""

Yeah, there is definitely some graffity that's done in an attempt to claim at least some small bit of the world as one's own (probably by the "less successful" young adults and teens who don't see a lot of options in their lives). But then there's political graffiti, which is more about communicating an important issue to the masses than is is about the person who creates it. And, of course, there's also the art. Graffiti can be wonderful folk art - art that isn't commissioned by the wealthy, or juried by a group of "art experts".

I love the "Santa is Real" graffiti all over the Boston area (with at least one in Davis). And the cute little clouds and critters that appear on signs are wonderful. I'm thankful for those little treasures because they make a place a little more interesting and personal.

Re: There's graffiti and then there's graffiti...

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, those clouds and critters bolted to the street signs are cute! And the "Andre the Giant has a Posse" stencils. I gotta admit, those amuse me.

But then, how do you distinguish that sort of "public art" (which I personally appreciate) from teen hoodlums tagging park benches and throwing their sneakers over telephone wires, or the Newbury Street club-promoters who wander down the street with a backpack of posters, dropping a few on the street every ten feet?

That's hard to do. Somebody's gotta make a judgement about the skill level and the motivation of the artist. And then we get back to arts councils and the like...

And speaking of motivation, apparently a lot of the tagging in dangerous low-income areas is done to broadcast one's own continued existance. Davis Square is hardly a dangerous area, though, and we've got some little wannabees tagging.