It’s everywhere.
It’s on buildings, benches, street poles, garbage cans, and parking meters. Graffiti is synonymous with the beleaguered Tenderloin neighborhood, the epicenter of the city’s drug and homelessness crises.
But on Friday, a little slice of the TL — on Larkin, Hyde, Turk, and O’Farrell streets — got a good scrubbing.
Officials have dubbed the cleanup event the “graffiti blitz.” It was the first of its kind in the Tenderloin and the first organized by San Francisco’s Public Works Department with a Community Benefit District, nonprofit organizations that aim to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods across the city. The work was handled by staffers from both, along with an army of 70 volunteers and two paint-matching trucks.
Crystal Watson, who lives in a shelter and works on the Tenderloin Community Benefit District’s city-funded Clean Team, is no stranger to the Groundhog Day feeling of leaving a sparkling street one day only to return the next to find it filthy.
When she’s working, she rolls her garbage bin, to which she has added incense to shield her from the foul stenches she encounters picking up feces, cigarette butts, and other trash. But on Friday, instead of the trash bin, she wielded a paintbrush.
Reaching her roller brush up the side of a building on Willow Street, she blanketed a tag in fresh yellow paint. To Watson, it’s important to do this work even with the looming threat that in a few days, the area might be covered in tags again. It’s about making the space beautiful for community members. An artist, Watson thinks people should be able to paint.
“Make it a mural. Make it an event, so it’s not just that ‘I’m juiced, I’m gonna go put my tags up,’ she said. “There are a lot of artists out here. I’m all for it. It just needs a designated location.”
Mayor London Breed made an appearance, praising the Public Works Department for showing up in the Tenderloin “every single day” and characterizing the event as a celebration of the partnership with the TLCBD, which has been supercharged in the last year, according to Executive Director Kate Robinson.
A recent grant allowed the TLCBD to double its cleaning crew, according to Robinson, who praised Public Works Director Carla Short for her commitment to the neighborhood.
“Doing things like this and doing them consistently tells people that this is a neighborhood that is cared for,” Robinson said. “That is what reduces people tagging or treating this neighborhood like they do.”
Volunteers from a number of community organizations, including the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team, also known as Hot T, and Larkin Street Youth Services were deployed across the targeted blocks. A group of volunteers on Willow splayed out to paint buildings, many of which were small businesses completely covered in brightly colored graffiti, making sure to keep a mural of a bull intact.
Melvin Caldwell, a volunteer and outreach worker with Hot T, shook his head when asked how he felt about the Sisyphean task volunteers were carrying out.
“At some point, they may stop tagging our community,” Caldwell said. “But in the meantime, if we can get rid of the graffiti, even if for a day, it’s worth it.”