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Ajijic Skateboard Park Graffiti Cleaned Up (A Little)


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Tim, one of the new volunteers, spent a lot of time and burned through many pieces of sandpaper cleaning up a corner wall across from the skateboard park. The park is still a mess but now all remnants of nasty tags are gone. Below are before and after images. Kudos to Tim and all those still trying to keep Ajijic graffiti free. More volunteers are always needed.

354629067_GraffitiBefore.thumb.jpg.b92f310877bd2ff76581443a507e0c37.jpg

 

1348633060_GraffitiAfter.thumb.jpg.8f2a13c3429e162d6b7ed03ecc6a45e6.jpg

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1 hour ago, Kyle said:

Where do you sign up to be a volunteer in Ajijic and get a schedule ?

If you send me a PM with your contact info I'll pass it on to one of the volunteers. Thanks for considering helping keep Ajijic free of graffiti.

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This will continue until that skate park is cleaned up and kept cleaned up.  I went down there week after week after week and cleaned the graffiti spawned around it for well over a year.  Before me several other volunteers did the same and sometimes it was necessary for two of us to work on it.  Unlike the rest of town the graffiti there has never abated.  Actually in the last few months I was working it, it got steadily worse.  Even at that I didn't have to deal with anything as bad as the picture above in this thread.  The vandals have escalated the damage.  Cleaning rock walls is a real bear although I do have some industrial strength chemical I imported for this purpose.

As a result of this skate park that area of the Malecon gets more graffiti now than the rest of Ajijic combined.  Within a few days of being erected, the "Ajijic" letters adjacent to it were tagged.  The basketball court  is tagged constantly as are the benches adjacent to it and the skate park.  It seems they like to stroll east from 6 corners on the Malecon tagging as they go but they reserve the heavy duty stuff for in and around the skate park.

I continue to work graffiti over a large area in and around Ajijic as I have for more than 10 years now but I decided that until some folks and the Chapala government wise up about the real source of this problem I just don't have the time or energy to go down there one or more times weekly and clean up after the constant tagging this facility spawns around itself.  If you see other graffiti please PM or email me.

This situation will never improve as the cause of the problem is not being addressed.  We are not having a unique experience here as even a brief review of the literature shows.  Thus far we don't seem to be learning from our own or the experiences of others.

Towns the world over have had the same experience until they either close these parks down (the more frequent solution) or enclose and supervise them.  Unfortunately we have people here who want to continue to ignore not only the local experience but that of others in literally thousands of localities.  Open and unsupervised = graffiti park in short order.

Good luck with this.  I do have some supplies including 6 gallons of gray paint that would be great for covering up the mess on the skate park.  Contact me by PM for details.

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Location, location, location … In the small town I live in Canada we put our skate park behind the police station …. we don't seem to have the graffiti problem :) , the skate park is well used, and the kids are even pretty good about trash. We're thinking of putting in a water station so that they can refill their water bottles rather than using single use plastic bottles. 

 

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Well obviously that doesn't apply here.  You've described a monitored situation.  Here there is no real monitoring by anyone.  Not sure I see the relevancy of your post.  This isn't Canada by a long shot.  This facility is badly degraded and has degenerated to a hang out for delinquents who tag it and the surroundings constantly.

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What they did in Mazatlan was to get the known taggers involved in the clean up with a public recognition of their efforts i.e. photos and article in the local newspapers about their involvement in the clone up.  They and their families loved it.  It got improved fast.

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Why not use anti graffiti coatings? I worked on the restoration of a very public building in Vancouver. At street level, I found a coating that was resistant to almost all solvents and even contained teflon. All graffiti wipes off like one of those dry erase boards, sharpie pens, acrylic spray, you name it. The only problem that came up is the cement based grout was not sealed, because the building had to "breathe", and the paint did stick to the grout.

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8 minutes ago, Mainecoons said:

That supposedly was the idea in letting them tag the skate park.  Not working so well.  

 

The location chosen for the skate park was the first mistake.  Everything else followed inevitably, including the destruction of the walkway next to it.  I think the idea of providing the kids with a skate park (and even a place to get the graffiti need out of their systems) is a fine one, but it should never have been placed in an area on display to the whole world like this one is.  That, and the pure stupidity of having a bowl feature with no drain.  That one is now being filled with debris as well as dirt.  Would it do any good at all to protest it? 

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