Escondodo wrote on Nov 16, 2008 6:19 PM:I am not sure why the "arts" commission is upset about graffiti when there are blocks upon blocks of blight visible from the sprinter from the time the train enters Vista until it passes through to either the east or west. I lived in Vista for 20 plus years and never knew that parts of the city were so run down with dilapidated buildings and junk especially along Santa Fe. That is definitely not a view any Chamber of Commerce would have in mind.

Greg in Oceanside wrote on Nov 16, 2008 6:46 PM:Is anyone really surprised that there's a graffiti problem along the Sprinter line? I'm not.

This only further illustrates we have too many gang members, punks, thugs and losers running rampant in our North County communities trying to deface our public infrastructure.

Most often, graffit is committed by young men whose parents have no control or idea what their child is doing or who they're hanging out with. If any suspects who are caught are minors, their parents need to be held accountable and charged with contributory negligence and fined accordingly.

We need video surveillance installed in those areas where graffiti is a problem, and to prosecute anyone caught to the fullest extent of the law.

vista resident wrote on Nov 16, 2008 6:57 PM:I think everyone knows by now that if you build a wall in Vista, somebody will graffiti it. I knew this was going to happen as they were building the walls. The Sprinter should be accountable for the graffiti along the tracks. They need to remove the graffiti as soon as possible. Look at the wall on S. Santa Fe behind the AMPM. The city of Vista should not tolerate the graffiti along the tracks nor should the residents. It’s time the city does something about it.

Milo wrote on Nov 16, 2008 7:41 PM:I wish the media would QUIT referring to those who deface property and mar the city as "taggers".
Call them what they are: VANDALS.
Call it what they do: VANDALIZE the property of others.
Why do they never report the amount of monetary damage caused?
The media's politically correct semantics only supports the desire of graffiti vandals to make their criminal acts sound as if they are no big deal.
The[y] ... should be ostracized, not made to sound like Robin Hood.

Hold on a minute wrote on Nov 16, 2008 7:55 PM:The City sues NCTD over the noise of the Sprinter. They get 2 million dollars. Now, they want to spend that money on murals.

Hey, how about giving that money back to the NCTD? Wouldn't that be fair?

or this... wrote on Nov 16, 2008 7:57 PM:How about using that dough to rebuild the baseball field that runs along the rail line? Vista and Oside have been wrestling over who was going to pay for the cleanup of that site for YEARS, while the kids play on a crummy field.

Vista City Council Members wrote on Nov 16, 2008 9:01 PM:Vista needs to tear down Santa Fe and rebuild the corridor. Vista is extremely disgusting. The only nice thing about the city of Vista is Shadow Ridge. Vista to me reassembles a third world country. The city of Vista should take some lessos from Carlsbad how to fix up a city.

Umm.. wrote on Nov 16, 2008 9:08 PM:Murals also look ghetto and trashy. Murals usually mean the neighborhood has issues. This is nothing new in those areas of Vista. The train engineers have been seeing the same things for years, but now that there's trains with passengers on this corridor again, they are suddenly worried about it? Plant ivy on walls, put in automatic sprinklers, etc. Or how about.. finding something for those 'kids' to do, what a novel concept.

Murals can be cool if.... wrote on Nov 16, 2008 9:51 PM:You do beach and Ocean scenes. Make them look Tropical. Don't make it race oriented.

Underwater Mural would be cool wrote on Nov 16, 2008 9:52 PM:A big under water scene would be cool, Like whales , Dolphin and Fish

John wrote on Nov 16, 2008 10:20 PM:Catch them in the act. Severly punish the vandals. Put them in jail. Make it PAINFUL for them; make it well known. It's the only way.

Randy Campbell wrote on Nov 17, 2008 12:52 AM:Here we go again, another city thinking they have the answer, and once again it is called murals. When will these cities learn from the past mistakes of other cities, is this city unique in that they will not have the exact same problems that other cities have gone through when they tried murals? Have they even taken the time to research other city murals to understand the problem? The "Arts Commission" or whatever they call it in this city is the same type of people that always think that giving an area to the vandals to create a mural, will actually stop vandalism. First off, you are helping to promote graffiti by saying it is OK, second, what they fail to realize, is that these vandals do not respect property, even if you create a mural, some vandal is going to vandalize it at some point, then what happens? who is going to try and fix the original mural back to it's original state, and what will that now cost to have done? Have you looked at the murals of Los Angeles in years past, nearly all are gone because vandals will graffiti them also. What about Venice Beach (The Pit) as it was known, a place for great cultural arts, completely bulldozed over because of all the vandalism to the original murals. In fact, none of the original murals were even able to be seen due to all the vandalism to them. What about the community near the murals, would you believe a 1000% rise in graffiti vandalism to the community, done by vandals walking to and from these areas. So go ahead and copy the mistakes of other cities, it seems that it is the norm for local governments to never try and learn from the past mistakes of others, and all of us end up paying the bill in the end. Visit us at nograffiti.com to see all about this problem. We are a non profit group and provide information such as this, free of charge to anyone who wants it.

Get Real wrote on Nov 17, 2008 3:14 AM:Is there really any way to "fix" Vista?

dave from oceanside wrote on Nov 17, 2008 5:21 AM:How about a mular of a cop arresting a tagger "vandal" with his parents and the punk in the next seen cleaning up the mess.

space mural wrote on Nov 17, 2008 5:48 AM:with planets and stars maybe a couple UFO's buzzing around that would be out of this world

Bob wrote on Nov 17, 2008 6:11 AM:Yeah, the whole ocean thing would be cool, but Vista is inland. I know, how about mural depicting gangsters, street robberies, drug sales and murder, that would be really cool.

Hey Milo wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:07 AM:Forget it, son. It's the reason that illegal aliens are called immigrants. Same as calling homosexuals gays. NCT and ilk like them are engaged in a war of euphemisms to muddy up the TRUTH.

Hey Mayor wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:13 AM:Wrong again, Morris Vance!! Why do you insist on wasting our money??? Please resign and let someone rational take over the reigns. The current administration in Vista has nothing but bone-headed ideas for problems such as this.

FTM wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:16 AM:Murals are a cop out - Murals tell the community "we give up" - "we can't control the crime here so we are going to try to camouflage it" . .
Graffitti is a "gateway Drug".
Young punks get addictied to the high of getting away with tagging and when that get's too boring they move on to robbery and violence. You would serve those young people better to spend the money on survelance cameras to CATCH the taggers so you can break the cycle that helps create next years gang members.
It takes Cops and residents working together to catch the taggers, but nothing will happen as long as you pretend it's not there or 'gloss over it'. That just makes it worse.

People Lover wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:35 AM:Some of those spray can artist are quiet talented. Give them something to do and get a great outcome while putting them to work.

P wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:59 AM:To "Dave from O'side" Ha Ha !! Good one!

GK wrote on Nov 17, 2008 8:24 AM:Hey I am all for it. I am a muralist, so I could have something to offer.

jt wrote on Nov 17, 2008 8:49 AM:This goes back a long way... like when they got rid of ARTS in the school. Of course the kids want to color and paint. If we would all wake up let them do art in school and they would most likely stay there and learn something valuable in the process!

American wrote on Nov 17, 2008 8:59 AM:Don't punish the vandals. Paint murals over the vandalism so Mayor Vance can pass out his worthless "AWARDS" to the artists at a city council meeting to make all feel warm and fuzzy. ...

Umm.. wrote on Nov 17, 2008 8:59 AM:The murals tend to be race related, and they tend to be just a cover or mask to the real problem. The murals on the rear walls of the self storage at Olive and Melrose look trashy. At one point the tagging got so bad that they just fenced off the whole 'park' so no one could use it at all. They painted those ugly murals on the walls as an answer as if somehow thats going to magically stop a spray can.

Cover the whole area with poison ivy and oak. Put up a warning sign and a nice picket fence that says "Do not cross". Then anyone that shows up with poison ivy/oak symptoms is guilty.

Bob wrote on Nov 17, 2008 9:56 AM:Plant vines.

Artsyrat wrote on Nov 17, 2008 10:10 AM:Here we go again.....I have been very involved in anit-graffiti mural campaigns in Vista that suppossedly stopped the graffiti on these cronically tagged walls.

In the 1990's I and two other artists took on the task we called 'Murals of Vista'. We or the city would find a wall that had a history of being tagged, the owner would be contacted, the City would get all the necessary legal steps taken. I personally did 6 anti-graffiti mural projects with the community involved. Three of the five murals, I primarily designed. One mural project (187 ft mural series) taggers were allowed to paint legally. One mural I completely did myself/solo.

Four of these large murals were painted by anyone in the community who would come along while I was painting on the mural. They could sign in and then paint on the mural. The taggers mural project was cool, they filled out an application and painted a 10x12foot section of wall with whatever they desired(as long as it was within the guidelines). Taggers were coming from Riverside, Orange County, San Diego and other places to get a chance to paint on these sections of wall! Unfortunately, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch and that happended here. A very small number of tagger/artists would not stay within the guidelines and I decided to stop the project. No one else took it over so it was over.

For a good while these walls all remained clean from graffiti but eventually weather, sun and erosion took it's toll on the quality of the paintings and that's when the taggers came in and started to tag again on them. It's very difficult for an artist to go back and constantly retouch a mural, particularly 6 of them. I personally have a difficult time with this. I currently need to go back and fix the mural i did at Wild Wood Park and haven't been able to yet.

My advice to the City of Vista and it's mural problem would be this. Forget the anti-graffiti murals. They don't last very long because of the exterior environment and taggers will eventually hit them and once that's happened, it's free pickings for any tagger to vandalize. Instead, the City should purchase a series of colors of paints, tans, browns, whites, greens and grays, blues (all natural colors)and when a wall is tagged, paint a patchwork design on the entire wall. Kind of abstract designs with basic shapes of natural colors but not very detailed and not too loud or distracting. This type of design would be easy for almost anyone to paint since there is not really any precise format or pattern to follow and it would be natural color schemes that would blend into the environment. If the wall got tagged, covering the vandalism would be easy because there is already a patchwork effect on the wall. You would never know the graffiti had ever been there because it would be covered with one of the several colors already in the patchwork mural.

Enforce the laws wrote on Nov 17, 2008 10:29 AM:use cameras and arrest them

Put out a 1000 reward to catch a vandel in action wrote on Nov 17, 2008 11:04 AM:Then charge the parents of the vandel for the crime and put the parents in jail. Setup bill boards of those caught vandelizing the city. We need a city council that can think out of the box and solve problems

Follow Singapores example wrote on Nov 17, 2008 11:13 AM:I had the opportunity to visit Singapore and could not believe how clean the country (not just one city) was. I heard they have strick laws on defacing homes and buildings. Imagine that there are laws against destroying other peoples (including the governments) property and people obey those laws. Many of the people in Singapore as less off than the people of Vista yet they don't destroy their country.

Why not include local teens wrote on Nov 17, 2008 11:16 AM:in the making of the mural? Businesses can donate to help out with art supplies. Ask local highschool art students to create it. In return, the kids get bragging rights to say they did the art. The school uses it as an extracurrular venue. The neighborhood then has some ownership of the art because their children have participated in the project. Community involvement - what a concept. Win-Win

Mark in Vista wrote on Nov 17, 2008 1:18 PM:Good one Bob. The sad reality is that enforcement of vandal crimes is not a high priority. Planting vines sounds cheaper than Murals. North & South Santa Fe didn't used to look this 3rd world. I'm sick of Vista, they're far behind in comparison to San Marcos & Escondido.
My home value is not likely to come back after the Sprinter went in. I used to think this place would grow & flourish with commerce, but instead became a wasteland. The Sprinter should be renamed the Folly Trolley, because of the insane amount of money wasted on it. I'm fed up with this dirty, run down, inadequate community. Thank God I don't plan to retire in this pathetic dump of town.

snuffy wrote on Nov 17, 2008 2:26 PM:our jobsite was repeatedly hit by taggers, Just myspace the "tag" and WA la! there they were, bragging online , like idiots. sweet! cops loved that. The artist should also give up the "applications" he put out to the cops for "research" purposes.hehe

Oside Mom wrote on Nov 17, 2008 3:36 PM:I remember a news report about a son of a military officer. They were in Taiwan or Singapore and he was caught "tagging". Taggers in that country have their dominant hand chopped off! Thus the reason they don't have a graffiti problem. Last I heard, the US government stepped in and prevented the chopping.

Ken wrote on Nov 17, 2008 4:01 PM:Hey American, you got it right on! Vista COULD coat these walls with brake fluid or something else that paint won't stick to. OR, we can spend plenty of money to make murals and keep them up. Mayor Vance can get his picture in the paper, posing with artists in front of their work. And yeah, more lame and fuzzy presentations at city council meetings. If you were Morris Vance, what would YOU do? Spend Spend SPEND!!! OUT WITH VANCE!!!

not sure about this wrote on Nov 17, 2008 5:29 PM:What will prevent the vandals from graffittiing the murals? Like suddenly they'll gain respect for art and not want to deface it?

obama mural wrote on Nov 17, 2008 5:38 PM:How about a mural of El Presidente elect Obama? He can be drawn passing out all the free stuff he's gonna give us. It will be a constant reminder of who the Redeemer is. His face in paintings everywhere. Kinda like they do in communist type countries. They wouldn't dare graffiti it.

murals wrote on Nov 17, 2008 7:49 PM:i grew up in florida and they have a different solution other than walls and "murals"
its called trees
and not building a train through the middle of town
leaving enough room to hide it with a thick line of trees
i know this isnt florida
but cant people out here plan better?

Gary in Murrieta wrote on Nov 18, 2008 1:55 AM:It is a shame what people do with private property that does not belong to them.

I am recently back from an 8 month deployment overseas, and since back, I have noticed every time I go to the local gas stations, that there is graffiti etched on the gas pumps face, graffiti in the restrooms and graffiti on the building. Not just one gas station, but most all of them.

As far as the city goes, I report any and all local graffiti and it is usually removed the next business day.

The following is sarcasm... wrote on Nov 18, 2008 7:39 AM:Good luck with that costly graffiti abatement program. Such expensive efforts have cleaned up the rail system in NYC and Chicago. Nope, not a graffito to be seen along the tracks in those cities. Be sure to spend millions of dollar fighting graffiti while the money is needed elsewhere in Vista for more important problems. Good thinking City Council. The comment above is sarcasm....don't get confused estaban

FTM wrote on Nov 18, 2008 7:41 AM:Can't you people read? The person that paints the murals for the city blogged here and HE says the murals DON'T WORK!

Trees and vines?? We live in a desert! Who pays for the water?

Why not CATCH THEM!?

In oceanside the OPD has CAUGHT over 14 taggers and identified many more! Once you know who they are it pretty much ruins thier tagging carreerr!! It's pretty hard to go out tagging when the cops know who you are! Oceanside PD keeps records and has a moving camera program and OPD PROSECUTES! Graffitti in Oceanside is less than it ever was in the history of the city because of the OPD treating it as a CRIME.

Good old fashioned police work solves the problem and cost the least amount.

Vista people need to get involved in this problem. Stopping tagging also prevents other crimes. (Stopping taggers helps save the taggers from a life of crime too).

Artsyrat wrote on Nov 18, 2008 8:04 AM:In our neighborhood we have a large group of residents who get involved in keeping our hood, our hood. When graffiti hits us, we take a picture of it, call the city and the Sheriff, email the city the picture of the graffiti and if the city or the property owner doesn't remove the graffiti, we do! I'm telling ya, it works like a charm. The more we respond quickly to the graffiti, the less it appears in our hood. Try it. You first have to get to know your neighbors. What a concept.

FTM wrote on Nov 18, 2008 8:25 AM:Artsyrat is totally right!

All complaining aside, (I know we blogger just love to complain), but sometimes the answer to problems ARE addressed in these blogs and Artsyrat has the answer!

I know you naysaying complainers just want to avoid putting in all that extra effert so you poo poo stuff but deep down I know your just as concerned about graffitii as the rest of us. You don't have to lift a finger! Just call the graffitti hot line for your city and report ANNONOMOUSLY! It's easy and solves the problem!

We have lots of volenteers to spy on the taggers and they will be caught - I garantee it - but you MUST REPORT IT or we will never catch them!

vistacitizen wrote on Nov 18, 2008 2:23 PM:Graffiti is a pox on our community and getting rid of it is always a good idea. Publicly displayed art enriches our lives and should be encouraged.

What's wrong with this story is that councilman Campbell wants to dump Ms. Sowell's private funding proposal and instead use $100K of taxpayer money. And since you'll need to buy a train ticket to see that art, it becomes subsidized pay-for-view art, which is of course, wrong on any level.

Artsyrat wrote on Nov 18, 2008 4:14 PM:ha, ha! Pay-for-view art...that's funny! Wrong of course, but that was funny.

HEY yeah wrote on Nov 19, 2008 9:40 AM:where is Esteban ? Did he go on vacation without internet access or something?

John wrote on Nov 27, 2008 4:33 AM:Well, what do you expect...This is Vista!