A few days ago I saw a story that indicated that Halifax would be making efforts to remove graffiti before the beginning of the upcoming Canada Games. Of course, so far I haven't seem much evidence that much graffiti has actually been removed.
Actually, if anything, I have noticed that a few of the people who have hit the wall behind my bedroom window have also been active in other parts of the neighbourhood.
'Tweak,' the individual who hit my wall a few weeks ago, seems to have tagged another part of the same building and a nearby light post base. Not that my opinion counts for much, but I am not a big fan of 'Tweak's work. This emphasis on tagging seems only slightly removed from, if not inferior to, marking one's territory with urine.
Though I don't know the person's name/handle/whatever, the most recent individual to hit the place my window seems slightly more ambitious and, dare I say, talented.
It seems that this person, like 'Tweak,' has hit a number of locations in our neighbourhood. A few days ago I found another instance of their work at the top of my street.
Anyway, all of this is just to say that it would seem that Halifax is still rife with graffiti, despite their best efforts to the contrary.
A few weeks ago I noticed that we had some new graffiti on the wall across from my bedroom. The blue and orange faces of a few months ago were now obscured by a relatively large white design accompanied by the word 'tweak.' As far as I was concerned, this was definitely a step backwards as far as my view was concerned. The mustachioed orange guy, in particular, was at least a little whimsical and amusing while the 'tweak' thing is just eight kinds of bland.
Anyway, it seems that the 'tweak' piece just wasn't meant to last. At some point last night more graffiti was added to the same patch of cement meaning that much of the recently added white piece has now been completely obscured. Given that we are now back to two faces I am curious if we in haven't had another visit from the same person who was so kind as to grace us with the blue and orange faces?
I guess I will just have to get used to the new view, though I probably shouldn't get too used to it as it is sure to change in the relatively near future.
-As has been standard so far this winter, today saw us get some rain and have temperatures hovering just above freezing. Talk about fun weather.
-As suggested by our last post, we had salads with our dinner tonight. This means that everyone had at least one salad today and some of us had two. It should also be noted none of us over-indulged in the main course, which was chili. Of course, all of this salad consumptions means that I am likely going to have to make a run to the carrot store tomorrow to pick up a few more carrots and some celery (which happens to be on sale this week).
-I have been doing a fair bit of studying today, though I guess I could have been a little more diligent.
-It seems that there is some new graffiti on the cement wall across from my bedroom window. I guess none of us noticed this going up yesterday.
Unfortunately, this new addition to the wall, at least in my opinion, isn't as nice as what is to be found under it. That the graffiti has taken a turn for the worse is unfortunate as I have to spend a fair bit of my time looking at it. I guess at this point I wouldn't mind if the building decided to remove everything and start from scratch.
-Oh, and I should note that in addition to increasing my salad consumption I am trying to put a little more emphasis on doing more chin-ups, a pursuit that fell by the wayside this summer shortly after a accidental self-inflicted rib injury.
Just because some of the House graffiti may have been removed from the removed from the Dal campus a few days ago does not mean that such graffiti is not still present in the vicinity of the campus.
This morning as I was walking to school along South Street I noticed some similar graffiti on the sidewalk. In this case the stencilers were bold enough to include a pun
As many of you might have observed, it has snowed in Halifax. We finally have a few centimeters of fresh powder on the ground.
A few days ago I post a photo of some new graffiti at Dal and wonder how long it would last.
The answer, it seems, was today.
As I was walking to school today I noticed that a graffiti removal company employee was just starting to remove the offending graffiti on the side of the computer science building.
Based on personal observation it seems that stencil-based graffiti is becoming popular in a number of places, including in Halifax. Over the course of the past few years I have seen a number of incarnations of such endeavours, some of which seem to be more message-based than others.
An iteration of this trend that seems to be cropping up on the Dalhousie campus is a House (of the TV show) stencil that depicts House's head.
The thing about this image that I can't quite figure out is why it is relevant (particularly to the side of the computer science building), or, to put it differently, worth the effort and possible criminal charges? Furthermore, were the stenciled image and the text created by the same person at the same time? Whether the text and image are of the same origin or not, what is the meaning of the phrase "I'm coming"? Is my sophomoric interpretation that far off-base?
I am also curious to see how long Dalhousie will allow these images to remain. Presumably those on buildings (and not sidewalks) will be removed somewhat promptly?
A few days ago I noted the existence of a new series of graffiti ads from EastLink that were beginning to appear on local sidewalks.
Obviously, these ads didn't appear to be particularly legal, nor was I a fan of the idea of companies defacing public property for profit.
Eventually, though just before Hurricane Earl, I reported the ads to the City through an online form. While at first I saw no action and couldn't tell if my complaint had been acknowledged or not, today I was pleased to see that the ads have been removed from at least one location (the location I reported).
What I don't know is whether or not the company has been charged/fined for their offense. I guess I can use the follow-up number that was provided to me to learn exactly what will be happening to EastLink as a result of their graffiti ad campaign (which I hope they have now stopped).
Edit: Apparently The Coast also noted the problem. Furthermore, based on EastLink's Twitter account it seems that they had to deal with a degree of negative feedback regarding the ads, which were apparently made of chalk.
-As expected, today was incredibly hot (kind of like the past few days). The humidity made the relatively high temperatures incredibly unpleasant and sweat inducing. As the evening has started to set in the temperature has started to drop, amazingly this hasn't seemed to caused much change in our apartment (presumably because of the heat retaining power of our apartment building's bricks).
-Today, because of the expected arrival of Hurricane Earl, a number of non-standard actions were taken in Halifax. One of the first of these actions that I learned about was the holding of an auxiliary farmer's market this afternoon. Strangely, they seemed to suggest that tomorrow morning's edition of the farmer's market was also expected to go ahead (I guess I will have to wait and see if this actually happens). The second somewhat unusual going on was that Halifax closed all of its sports fields for the long-weekend in anticipation of the storm. The result of the closure is that our final regular season Ultimate game of the season has been cancelled. As much as it might have been nice to play one more regular season Ultimate game, I am particularly pleased to know that the game won't be going ahead several days ahead of time.
-Jeannette and I ended up visiting the auxiliary farmer's market this afternoon. The trip was definitely a waste of time, there were very few vendors and basically no deals to be had (a fact that was driven home by a recent trip to the Valley, where they have real deals).
-Hurricane Earl is definitely on course to hit the Maritimes in the next few hours. That being said, I am not entirely convinced that Halifax will be hit to hard (at least if the imagery is to be believed).
On the other hand, it looks as though the North coast of the province will be hit pretty hard. Of course, this is of increased interest to our apartment now that Rebecca's brother, Nick, lives on that side of the province.
-We discovered more mouse activity in our apartment this evening. Hopefully all available food has been secured and any incentives for further presence removed.
-Tonight Neil signed up for a Costco membership. Because I was there, reside at the same address as Neil, and have a drivers license I was given the second membership card. We then went on to purchase quite a number of item, very few of which were complete extravagances.
-Just a few minutes ago I reported the advertising graffiti that wrote about earlier. Hopefully the city will clamp down on the offending company and consequently discourage other companies from adopting similar practices. I guess for any thing to happen the city will actually have to take action, which likely won't happen until after the long weekend.
-We are presently in the midst of another great day in Halifax. The sun is out and there is a slight, cooling breeze. Unfortunately, I have, as of yet, been largely unable to take advantage of the great weather.
-Our over use of Neil's newly acquired SodaStream machine continues. I have to imagine that we have now consumed more than 20 litres of carbonated water since it was purchased a few days ago.
The more I think about it the more I have come to realize that these comments seem like some kind of advertisement for this product. They are not, or at least they are not paid advertising. These are coming about because I am just quite taken with the contraption and the output.
-This afternoon, while sitting at my desk with my window open, I happened to hear someone giving a tour of the adjacent building's property. While they were directly across from my window they stopped to explain the existence of a lone appearance of graffiti.
According to the gentleman giving the tour, the location on which this graffiti is found is visible at a nearby intersection. Actually, he suggested that it was more than just visible, that vehicles at the intersection would illuminate the graffiti when they stopped. While they removed the graffiti on occassion they have since decided that they might as well just leave it in place given the popularity of the spot and the likelihood that it will be re-tagged if cleaned.
I was glad to catch this snippet of conversation as it provided me with an explanation about the absence of removal attempts since the one that I witnessed a few months after arriving.
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-A few days ago I became aware of a new method for tracking our site visits and usage to complement our use of Google Analytics. While this new method gives us real-time updates, because our blog is relatively unread this hasn't really meant much, at least until today. It seems that my recent post about signing up for an Empire Avenue account has been quite popular, at least for Montifax. The post in question, in just a matter of minutes, received more views than any other posts from the past two months. What was strangest about this is that most of the traffic occurred within just an hour of two of the post first going live.
-Last night, as a follow up to our recent viewing of The Terminator, we sat down to watch Terminator 2 (on Blu-Ray - a completely unnecessary fact). Contrary to opinion of the Video Difference clerk who sold us The Terminator, I think that I preferred the latter to the former, though I guess it is a matter of opinion on both of our parts. Though neither is necessarily a great movie, both continue to stand up amazingly well as action movies. I have to imagine that these two movies are much more watchable than most of their contemporaries.
About a year ago a team of trained professionals came in removed the graffiti from the cement wall across from our balcony. At the time I thought that it was pretty neat that I had the chance to see this happen, particularly as there were able to remove the offending paint in just a matter of minutes.
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Then, last August, I happened to hear the application of the next coat of graffiti. Though my recollection is that I scared the offending vandal away by watching them, I obviously didn't figure out what was going on soon enough to really stop much of anything (and I certainly can't claim that I was trying to stop anything as my main interest was really just to figure out what was going on outside of my bedroom window). Anyway, the next morning I woke up to find this:
Today I looked out to see that we now have a new addition to the graffiti collection.
It seems that this most recent addition to the collection was placed directly on top of last Augusts addition. I guess I will be curious to see if this particular addition will encourage last August's artist to come back and reclaim their territory, or if this infraction will go unpunished. I guess I am also curious to see if the building owners will once again have the graffiti removed professionally. Of course what I find most amazing about this graffiti location is that we are basically the only people who ever get to see this section of wall so really don't know why it is so popular, and well known.
Things started to get a little strange at about 8:10 or so, just as the sun was starting to set and things were beginning to become darker.
I was working at my desk when I saw a tallish, seemingly inebriated young male approach the fence/rail outside of my window and proceed attempt to climb and then fall over the obstacle. After lying down on the cement for a few moments this individual made his way towards our balcony. As he moved out of my line of sight and into the range of my plants I was a little worried that he might knock things over or try to abscond with one or more of my plants.
It seems that this young man was actually just going to retrieve his hat, which must have been dropped from one of the floors above onto our balcony area, and which he returned to his head as he made his way back to the fence/rail.
A little later in the evening, maybe at about 10:00 I heard a clattering sound coming from our balcony. As Rebecca had almost simultaneously banged a drawer I assumed that that was in fact all I had heard. A little later in the evening, when I actually made it back to the balcony, I learned that someone had thrown an empty energy drink can onto our balcony, the first such incident since I have been living here. A little later I looked from our balcony to the parking lot below and noticed that about 10 cans had ended up there also.
Just before 2:30 I was lying in bed when I heard what sounded like an aerosol can being used. Amazingly, one of my first thoughts was that someone was installing some new graffiti on the cement wall across from my window. I got up and peeked under my curtain and saw someone with their back to the walling, standing in a position that suggested they were hoping not to be seen. New markings on the wall were also visible, though at the time what these markings were of was not particularly clear. Though I heard another spray or two, I think I scared the person away before they were ready to leave.
When I went out to check on things this morning this is the quality work that I found.
Rebecca was wondering if I distracted them before they had a chance to add colour. I think that the person I distracted likely just isn't particularly talented. The other thing that makes this so great is that I will be one of the handful of people in the world who might get a chance to see this on a daily basis.
You may recall that just a few months ago some graffiti was removed from this location by a power washer-based operation.
[Embedded video]
After taking a photo of the new graffiti I was making my way back over the wall to my balcony when I noticed that something had been dropped on the banana plant. My feeling is that this is likely some tomato based sauce, maybe even pizza innards.
I have since washed the banana plant so that I doesn't have to pass its coming days with this guck on it.
There definitely a few strange goings on last night in my neighbourhood. I hope tonight is a little quieter.
Today while sitting at my desk I noticed that the building next door sent someone to remove some of the graffiti on the side of the building facing me. After watching the process for a few minutes I noticed that the individual working on the task was actually from a company who seems to specialize in graffiti removal.
The process seemed to start by the individual coating the affected areas with some kind of liquid, presumably a solvent of some sort or another. After this was allowed to soak in for a few minutes the guy then proceeded to spray the previously coated areas with a pressure washer. Within just a few minutes the graffiti had been removed.
The photo shows the original graffiti as well as the process of it being coated with what I presume to be a solvent.
The embedded video is of the power washing of the graffiti. As you can see, the whole process only took a few minutes and worked quite well.
