One of my new hobbies is cleaning Graffiti off my neighborhood. I HATE graffiti. There was a time when I was rather indifferent to it, even supportive of it as an art form - but those days are gone. Now I treat graffiti and those who practice it with genuine contempt.
I own my own place now, that is what changed. Late one night I smelled something funny, looked out the window and sure enough there is some little asshole spray-painting stupid shit on my building. I freaked, I called the cops, I gave chase, but he was already gone. As a renter, this never bothered me. If the landlord removed it or not I could care less, I'd probably be moving in a few weeks anyhow, but this was my place...
One of the things that is not well known about me is this: I like to solve big problems. If something is easy, it isn't really worth doing. There is no satisfaction like tracing a problem to its root and solving it forever. Right away I went into overdrive, calculating, measuring and weighing possibilities. Photos were taken and the foul mark was gone before dawn the next day. After I cleaned it off, I felt great. I went all around my neighborhood and buffed off the tags. The local businesses were thrilled, but wondered at my motivation. I told them "I just don't like graffiti." They even gave me a cookie.
This was done in broad daylight, I wanted everyone to see that this was how you do it. Get yourself some old socks/underwear, some "Goof off" graffiti remover or some similar product and you are ready to go. I joined the neighborhood crime watch and talked to the people there, since they just sat around saying "Someone should do something." (The most pathetic of all statements) and I countered with "Don't sit around and wait for the city to clean it, get out and clean it off yourself." and I gave them some tips on how to pretreat a surface so its easier to clean later. Vandalism will be around as long as young men come awkwardly of age and sneak around in the night acting wild. Better to be prepared and relaxed about it and buff it immediately since one mark tends to attract others.
After I buffed him, he came back and wrote his silly mark around again. Good luck for me it was a day off and I buffed him THAT SAME DAY. No one even got to see the mark this time. It was exhilarating. The purpose of graffiti - you see - is fame. To get that stupid shit on as many mailboxes and dumpsters as you can. Removing the mark sets them back. I didn't see any tags again for many weeks and was quietly disappointed he gave up so easy. Next time he came around it was USPS stickers with pink marker on them. Almost too easy.
I had won. It was weird. I know that I was motivated by vengeance, but I had been so positive about it. Not only that but my enthusiasm was contagious. After the neighborhood meeting the police were so impressed that I had taken the law into my own hands, they began asking people they arrested if they knew any writers and built a database on them. Turns out that graffiti writers don't have much in the way of honor among thieves, they couldn't rat each other out fast enough. The problem quickly went away.
I'm kind of sad about it really. Now all the graffiti I get is preteens with sharpies writing profanity at the bus stop, and the other "real" writers careers last until they run out of ink in the marker.
This isn't really relevant to minimalism, I just hate graffiti a lot.
