Summerside native spends summer cleaning city
Ryan Quigley
Journal Pioneer
Graffiti met a new enemy in mid-July. After discussing the idea with his mother, a Summerside native left his house riding a bicycle, dressed in a bike helmet, dark sweater, heavy rubber gloves, backpack to carry his tools and wireless headphones to listen to music, leaving a streak of clean signs and mailboxes behind him, five to be exact.
The Graffiti Warrior was born.
“I can get a sign done in two minutes roughly,” he said. “I’ve done a whole box, one of those grey Canada Post boxes, it usually takes me three minutes.”
The graffiti washing vigilante has been doing this since the beginning of the summer, now doing roughly 10 signs a morning, getting up at 5 a.m. to use his tools, industrial paint thinner, a plastic brush, a rubber wheel and a wireless power drill on stop signs, mailboxes and various publicly owned property littered with graffiti.
“If I see a sign, I can spot the ink just by looking at it, the ink I can take off just with thinner, and I know the thinner doesn’t hurt the sign, cosmetically or structurally,” said the Graffiti Warrior, who’s pseudonym came from close friends who know his identity.
It all began with his travels all over the world. After being impressed by one city in particular and its cleanliness he became inspired to do something about his hometown but didn’t know how.
Back at home in Summerside, one day at work, he discovered a work to have been vandalized with spray. Deciding to clean it, he grabbed the paint thinner and was shocked at how easily it came off.
That was when it came to him. How easy would it be to clean his own neighbourhood of the vandalism that covers it?
After his initial foray into the world of graffiti clean up went well, it became a regular thing, waking up at about five in the morning and working on cleaning graffiti-laden public property until six, taking on street at a time.
He estimates to have cleaned about 100 items in his work period and all the pictures of before and after are on his blog.
But with great power (or cleaning supplies) comes great responsibility.
The Graffiti Warrior has received plenty of threats, some of which can be violent.
“I’m not trying to aggravate (graffiti artists),” he said. “I’m hoping they’ll understand. They’re free thinkers, you can tell by their writing, I’m just hoping they’ll have respect for me. They’ll see what I’m doing and say, ‘Hey, the guy has got guts.’”
But not all reviews have been bad. Recently the Graffiti Warrior has spent some afternoons cleaning up and has been greeted by locals.
“They immediately know I’m cleaning signs,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re working for the city right?’ ‘No just volunteering,’ (he responds). A lot of them say ‘neighbourhood hero’ and stuff,” he laughed. “All the locals I’ve talked to have encouraged me.”
From his experiences this summer he has learned two things.
“If you’re going to start something, you got to finish it,” he said. “The second thing I learned that whatever you do, someone’s going to give you some bull over it, you know, try to push you around and give you some flak. But just take your guard and stand up.”
All in all he has no regrets, but hopes he inspired people to help keep their city clean.
“Hopefully I’ll have a better effect on people than bad,” he said. “I was hoping other people would here what I’ve done and start doing it themselves. Start doing a little bit of cleaning.”
