![]() He dipped a paint roller into a pool of paint and smeared it over graffiti on a building in Little Saigon. During his press conference announcing the event, Mayor Harrell buffed a wall for the TV cameras. But the day's many opportunities to buff graffiti in neighborhoods such as Belltown, Chinatown-International District, and Fremont garnered the most press coverage - and not by accident. The day of service, which takes place on May 21, boasts over two thousand volunteer opportunities, ranging from weed-pulling at Bitter Lake to plaque-polishing at Martin Luther King, Jr. I hauled my ass over to the bridge cleanup because Mayor Bruce Harrell recently announced the first One Seattle Day of Service, and I wanted to wrap my mind around the City's response to this practice. “I think our role as SPU is just to continue to try to keep up with it and keep the city as clean as we can.” ![]() I don't think it's going away,” said SPU Clean City Division Director Lee Momon, who was working at the bridge that morning. ![]() “Our stance is that is what Stacy's been doing for 20-some years. Workers drive out in the morning, cover up tags big and small, and then return home. More than a quarter-century later, the nuts and bolts of the job haven't changed much. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) established the Graffiti Rangers team back in 1994 as a way to oversee graffiti abatement on public property. “We knew it would be tagged by the end of the week.” Stacy Frazier, Ranger crew chief, said graffiti writers regularly hit the wall because you can see it from the windows of the office buildings downtown. (A "throw up" is graffiti composed of big, bubble letters that writers can throw up quickly.) Outfitted in safety suits and masks, the Rangers dutifully buffed (painted over) the vibrant, colorful graffiti with a color called WSDOT Gray, a custom pigment created by the state’s transportation department. In front of them, a couple throw ups covered a giant wall facing the highway. They hauled out their paint-splattered rollers and their five-gallon buckets, and then they got to work. On a recent wet and bright spring morning, two Seattle Graffiti Rangers parked their truck on the trail winding just below the Jose Rizal Bridge.
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