Take that, taggers: Dad-daughter team vanquish vandalism again

They’ve done it again – the wants-to-remain-anonymous West Seattle dad who went on an anti-graffiti tear with his daughter in summer 2009 – here’s the resulting story – found himself back for round 2. The vandals have been busy again lately – so, he wrote:

(Thursday) we had a father/daughter outing planned for a day of swimming and enjoying the summer day. Unfortunately, the weather did not quite cooperate but we still wanted to get outside. On a recent walk through Schmitz Park, we noticed the beautiful log benches in the center of the park were once again covered with graffiti. So we decided to spend our day cleaning up the benches and other graffiti around our neighborhood. We had a wonderful time together, cleaned up a lot of graffiti, and ended the day with a great sense of accomplishment as well as a great feeling of West Seattle community pride.

He shared numerous before/after photos; we’re putting up a couple here – though, as is our policy, we’ve blurred the tags in the “before” photos.

We asked what they use to remove tags. Answer: “We use ‘Goof Off’ and some scouring pads. They make a great product, and one specialized for graffiti. As for the log benches, the only way to get it off is with a hand-held wood planer.” If you’re not up for removal but want to be sure it at least gets reported – which police stress is important – here’s how to report tagging/graffiti vandalism on public property.

9 Replies to "Take that, taggers: Dad-daughter team vanquish vandalism again"

  • Sonoma August 21, 2010 (2:17 am)

    Thank you, anti-tag team! You two are the greatest.

  • miws August 21, 2010 (7:39 am)

    What Sonoma said!

    .

    Mike

  • Cclarue August 21, 2010 (8:04 am)

    What they said!!

  • bridge to somewhere August 21, 2010 (8:34 am)

    Neat family

  • DOC August 21, 2010 (9:20 am)

    You guys are great. Thanks for taking the time out to help out your community and neighbourhood. You rock!

  • RJB August 21, 2010 (10:35 am)

    Again what they said….thank-you!! This is why West Seattle rocks!! Wouldn’t live anywhere else!

  • Silly Goose August 21, 2010 (11:23 am)

    WOW this is awesome!! I wonder if we should join forces and use marine varnish and add many layers so nothing will stick to it. Also curious do you have a battery powered planer?

  • meg August 21, 2010 (12:37 pm)

    fabulous work, tag-removing team! thanks.

    I walked thru Schmitz Park recently and saw graffiti on the trunks of the trees. Any ideas how to remove that?

  • nmb August 21, 2010 (9:34 pm)

    While I applaud the anti-graffiti efforts of this father-daughter team, I question the wisdom of taking a planer to the wood bench. Isn’t planing the bench just as destructive (or more so) to the bench than the tagging itself? Put another way, if that bench were to keep getting tagged, there wouldn’t be much of a bench left after repeatedly removing it with a planer.

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