do you have another question? >> i have three more. >> you have three more up there, and anybody else going to be wanting to ask a question? okay, we'll get you lined up, then. >> let's see. this is to sharon. your capital city clean up program offers $1500 to private property owners to abate on heritage properties. what are the technical requirements to abate graffiti from heritage properties? >> i actually am not an expert in terms of the types of chemicals. so, i really captain answer that question. basically like i said before, we have our contractor on staff who is fully qualified, who is responsible for getting a letter approval through heritage for his chemical. they have to do a test with them to ensure that the products are safe for use on all heritage buildings. and so that's how we've been able to handle our heritage buildings. >> i think most of my

experience here in the states is it has more to do with the qualifications -- if it's designated listed historic property, then it tends to shift over to the qualifications have to be somebody that has a certain degree and conservation or that kind of thing. so, it's probably similar. it's some qualification type program. >> alrighty, thank you. i have a question over here. somebody get back here, if i could get you to stand up. your name is frank? >> yes. i've got two questions. one for marty and one for larry. marty, how many officers do you have dedicated to your graffiti program? and also larry, how many painters or staff is in your graffiti abatement program? >> great questions. >> well, i'm the graffiti guy, graffiti abatement guy. [laughter] (applause)

>> as far as the guys i use on my paint overs, i have a group of 3 to 4 guys and i pick them -- they're hand picked by me. i tend to pick guys who are patient, good with kids, guys who are school resource officers. that's a big plus. you know, you've got to like kids, maybe have experience in teaching, coaching, working with kids. like i said in my presentation, you don't want the guy with the rack shock and smoke mirror glasses who looks like he's working on a chain gang. you want someone who can maybe not talk to them in their own vernacular, but who can see eye to eye with them, talk to them about kid things and most of all be patient. and who can document trouble and kind of see things on the horizon that might be issues coming up and who are familiar with the san francisco

landscape. you know, i don't let just any cop come and do the overtime. very, very picky about who i get. and i get guys who are dependable and who are most of all good with kids. >> larry, part 2. >> about 18, roughly about five crews that go out total. but they remember their main focus is public, not private. so, in short that's the answer. >> [inaudible]. >> all public property. so, light poles, signal boxes. we do mailboxes, stickers, trees. garbage can. >> trash cans, yeah. >> [speaker not understood]. >> public. >> yeah, city property.

the benches in the parks. we don't do parks, but parks are done, rec and park does the benches he. we have some pretty basic colors. * so, most of our furniture is probably one of four colors. it's all going to be green. >> okay. let's see, what am i going to do? we're going to do this 15, 20 more minutes because i know mel needs to leave in a little while. we were going to go to about 4:15 but we're cut short a little bit. we'll do a ten-minute break after that and we'll kickoff some awards for people that are deserving. so, i'm going to take another question from gideon, gideon cramer, former member of the san francisco graffiti advisory board. and let's hear what you have to ask. >> this is a follow-up question for larry. we were talking about concrete

sidewalk graffiti and curbs. and your response was that that is private property or the owner -- the property owner is responsible. a number of my neighbors had asked me when they had graffiti said where do we go? technically you're responsible. so, what am i going to do? they ended up -- i said, do not paint over it. it's got to be power washed. you have to use -- that can be really expensive. they went and painted over it. and now it looks worse than the graffiti. i see it all over the city that a tag is painted over with brown paint, with whatever is available. and then it becomes a real problem because it's really hard to remove it then. so, i think that -- my thought about it, i know dpw doesn't have the financial resources, but realistically i think sidewalks even though they're kind of that nebulous gray area where technically they're owned by the property owner, but they

really are public property. and i think that's something that dpw should somehow find the funding to take care of that property because private property owners are not going to hire somebody with a power washer to come out there and do it. i just know it. i mean, i see very, very few examples of that. >> larry. >> i would agree. but as always, it's an issue of funding. we do have approved product listses on our website. so, if you run into somebody, there are some there they can use and actually work relatively well. but the ultimately cities face this all the time. you have to make decisions about what resources you have and what you can and can't do with the resources that you have. and, so, that's going to continue to be a problem. and it's always about the decisions, what you can do and what you can't. and while it's understandable, as long as they're abating the

graffiti, and i understand it doesn't look nice to have a sidewalk painted, but my reference would be tell them about the other products that are out there. and i'm not -- not all of the tags require a power washer to take it off. >> i'm going to speak as a property owner. >> go for it. >> i live in alameda. this was not graffiti, this was trees, replanting trees, they want to put a tree, who is responsible for that, sidewalks and everything. one thing they did do is they offered referrals for contractors, not just materials, but, you know, people who could do the trees or who could do the sidewalk repairs or what have you. so, that might be another option for different municipalities that help theirs. but that helped get her done. >> [speaker not understood]. >> go ahead. >> [speaker not understood].

[speaker not understood]. they know where to actually get power washers and things like that from home depot. they offer that information to the residents and that way that is something that is also helpful. so, there is another avenue there. >> go ahead. you want to add -- >> i wanted to add to this subject. going back to ghosting, there is a same situation with sidewalks. actually, i'm a contractor so i know. you need to have a lot of power on your power washer, a specific amount of pressure in order to be able to take some of the graffiti on the sidewalks. one point i haven't heard talked in this conference is an issue that has a lot to do with ghosting is that vandals are

coming up with new concoctions of paints that they use to make it harder to take out. so, i say that graffiti abatement is a combination of science and alchemy. because every time you get to a place, a small percentage you find pigments that's like from another world almost. but just to finalize, and i understand what larry was answering. it makes sense that you cannot hold property owners liable to graffiti ghosting. but is this a point of policy that maybe could look forward? other municipalities, that whenever there is ghosting, you actually encouraging more vandalism because that is an etch that is going to stay -- my grandchildren might still see it. so, what i'm saying is i think dpw does a great job on giving

referrals on contractors, by the way, and a wealth of information about products. but the bottom line is that property owner is only going to spend so much money over and over and over and get to a point that it's just too much money. so, ghosting i think to me is dear to my heart because of this. if it stays there it's going to attract more vandalism. >> great point, thank you. jan, do you want to read another question? >> yes, this is in regards to abatement and it's something that as a city we have issues with, too, so i would like an answer. is there a product that would clean [speaker not understood] without damaging reflective coating? i've used different brands with no luck and i end up replacing the sign. so, in your experience [speaker not understood]? oh, okay. >> [speaker not understood].

i've got a sign outside my house at home. somebody tagged my sign. so, i went out there and when i got done, there was no red paint left, just a big shiny reflective piece. so, i called up the city of highland and i said, my sign looks like crap. they said that's fine. you must have one of the old signs. and 3m is putting out a material, it's being used by our city and every one of our "street signs" come down. when a street sign comes down, san beerctionv dino does it, a lot of cities in california are doing it. san bernardino. * when you wipe it off it allows you to wipe the paint off. you don't get the run and such. so we're seeing more and more of it being used in california. you still have to clean it. it doesn't keep it from sticking, but it preserves the signs, don't have to keep changing the signs. >> all right. so, i want to actually ask a question of the attendees. was there anything about this conference that you can --

because basically we all live graffiti. graffiti is our live. we deal with it on a daily basis. anybody here come to this conference and whether it's from the panel or somebody that they spoke to here, one of the vendors that were here, that was something totally new, something you've never heard of before, something brand spanking new for you and something you want to take home with you to share with other people? chuck? >> we're launching our education program in the schools. the idea of having the kids do some artwork and then turn around and tag it in their class. so, they feel what it's like to be violated. that is so powerful, i can't wait to get home and start doing it. on the other side as a carrot, i have stickers. when you give blood like i do every eight weeks, they give me a little sticker. that says, be nice to me, i gave blood today.

[speaker not understood]. we need to do that for our clean-up people. so, when i take one of our felons, our misdemeanor kids and we go out and abate graffiti, at the end of the day i put a sticker on and says, be nice to me, i cleaned hayward today. your parents have to be nice to you and you tell them i said so. (applause) >> awesome, thank you. thank you. do you have another question up there? >> i do. >> okay, great. >> it's a rather hefty one. there is much more commercial tagging such as billboards, rap ads on buses, streetcars, structures built into sidewalks such as kiosks, news gras being, stand alone in ground billboards, and tagging by individuals. also people have become used to constant advertising. if we are wanting to make our city more beautiful, how do we handle commercial tagging? doesn't the amount of

advertising in public space affect us? does anyone want to take that? anyone want to tackle that one? >> i'll throw a little bit on that one. again, you know, the constitution has a real issue in america where we have freedom of speech. and just because something -- artwork that appears to be graffiti does not make it illegal. and the corporations know that graffiti is one of the edge things that draws youth and draws vibrance and it's a sign of being, you know, alive and active. you see it in all kinds of advertising and it's going to continue. the only way around it, i know there have been some contacts with certain corporations where they had it drawn to their attention, made a mistake and they would change. and that's the only way you can do it is dealing with the corporation itself. and that is going to be very difficult because as you saying i don't like this versus, hey,

we're selling $10 million worth of product this year and a lot of it is off of our graffiti campaign. when i show some of my stuff in -- we talk about commercial graffiti, there's a bunch of stuff in conon el, a toilet paper commercial. they had graffiti built onto each one of their toilet paper ads. they weren't getting bang for their buck and they got rid of t. there was a commercial from esther c. there was a supplement, a little orange and you ran around and saw graffiti and heard the police chasing him and stuff. i quoted that to the joe camel thing. kids look at that and think graffiti is cool. they received a lot of pressure and they pulled those ads. but you have the opposite side where you have like mountain dew where they go out and find 10 or 12 different taggers they

think are great, design custom mountain cans, extreme games is the thing they're pushing and they get a lot of input from that. they have a website and guys go out collecting cans reading about the poor vandals grew up on the mean streets, now they're artists because they have their own personal cans. we can't regulate what isn't personal constitution. if you can provide an economic impact, we as adults are looking at this and we don't want to deal with it, if you have any thought about this, contact randy campbell at no graffiti network. he's been battling against coca cola and their graffiti stuff for years and years and years. he can tell you what kind of battle that is legally. so, it's kind of the side effect of living in a free country. >> awesome, thank you. i believe you had a question here. did you have your hand up?

mine was a pretty good question. let's see what other answers we have. >> i'm the general services manager for our public works department which means i have 36 [speaker not understood] of program responsibility. and graffiti is the 36th. so, i really appreciate, especially dr. spencer and some of the other panelists who kind of help bring home some of the key points about how graffiti really is a gateway crime and how graffiti vandals escalate. and that's one, if any message i can take home, that's what i really want to so i thank you for that. omaha, nebraska. >> omaha, nebraska. you have one up there? >> i'm all done. >> do you have a question you wanted to ask? >> [speaker not understood]. >> we'll get to the sales pitches, okay. [laughter] >> okay. anybody else here, let me come over here because we're going to start wrapping this up pretty soon because we have some awards we're going to give out.

okay. i'm going to hold the mic and i'll determine how quick it's going to be, okay. [laughter] >> just to compliment the city of san francisco. i was on -- i took the muni in yesterday. and when i was on the bus in the morning, there is a repetitive announcement that went out that said, if you see graffiti, report it. and here's the phone number. it went out, i believe in three languages. that's wonderful. i think that's more key than if you hit the raid yoxtion and all that sort of media thing and grab that piece. * radio those are the people that are out there. >> awesome. if anybody has compliment for san francisco let me know because we can put that in right now. [laughter] >> alex, you live here. hold on. let me get over to you quickly and then we'll have you --

>> the one thing that i really got from catherine's presentation that really touched me was she was telling us to go forward 2030 in term of technologies and looking back to today. but this conference with all the vendors we had here had an amazing impact on me as learning of new technologies. i really feel in the 21st century of different types of technologies. i'm not going to make any pitches here. but bottom line is we are learning and this conference to me, and i know for many of us here, it was a great learning experience. thank you. >> awesome, thank you. (applause) >> thank you. all right. if we don't have any more questions, i'm going to give it over to drew to do his little sales pitch up there. or any announcements that need to be made. >> [speaker not understood]. >> okay, do you want the microphone? i'll hold it. i'm kidding. here you go.

>> i'm obviously part of the nonprofit [speaker not understood], i have a products company. and for what it's worth, it hasn't gone to development yet. but we have a one-coat film that so far is working on traffic signs with unlimited cleanings. once it goes to market we'll let you know at the 2013 conference. we're not quite there yet, but it is close. the films can be difficult to apply on signs and very labor intensive, but the sign shops something you'll be able to apply yourself. when it comes to completion, all graffiti [speaker not understood] will get a sample. can (applause) * >> okay. so, we have a couple minutes. if there's no more questions, no more compliments, the panel, thank you so much for coming. (applause) >> it's been awesome. hopefully we'll be having another one next year somewhere in the world.

... >> welcome to "culturewire." today we are at recology. they are celebrate 20 years of one of the most incredibly unique artist residency programs. we are here to learn more from one of the resident artists. welcome to the show, deborah. tell us how this program began 20 years ago. >> the program began 20 years

ago. our founder was an environmentalist and an activist and an artist in the 1970's. she started these street sweeping campaigns in the city. she started with kids. they had an exhibition at city hall. city officials heard about her efforts and they invited her to this facility. we thought it would coincide with our efforts to get folks to recycle, it is a great educational tool. since then, we have had 95 professional artists come through. >> how has the program changed over the years? how has the program -- what can the public has an artist engage with? >> for the most part, we worked with metal and wood, what you would expect from a program like ours. over the years, we tried to include artists and all types of mediums.

conceptual artists, at installation, photographers, videographers. >> that has really expanded the program out. it is becoming so dynamic right now with your vision of interesting artists in gauging here. why would an artist when to come here? >> mainly, access to the materials. we also give them a lot of support. when they start, it is an empty studio. they go out to the public area and -- we call it the big store. they go out shopping, take the materials that, and get to work. it is kind of like a reprieve, so they can really focus on their body of work. >> when you are talking about recology, do you have the only sculpture garden at the top? >> it is based on work that was done many years ago in new york. it is the only kind of

structured, artist program. weit is beautiful. a lot of the plants you see were pulled out of the garbage, and we use our compost to transplant them. the pathway is lined with rubble from the earthquake from the freeways we tour about 5000 people a year to our facility, adults and children. we talk about recycling and conservation. they can meet the artists. >> fantastic. let's go meet some of your current artists. here we are with lauren. can you tell us how long have been here so far and what you're working on? >> we started our residency on june 1, so we came into the studio then and spent most of the first couple weeks just digging around in the trash. i am continuing my body of work,

kind of making these hand- embroidered objects from our day-to-day life. >> can you describe some of the things you have been making here? this is amazing. >> i think i started a lot of my work about the qualities of light is in the weight. i have been thinking a lot about things floating through the air. it is also very windy down here. there is a piece of sheet music up there that i have embroidered third. there is a pamphlet about hearing dea -- nearing death. this is a dead rabbit. this is what i am working on now. this is a greeting card that i found, making it embroidered. it is for a very special friend. >> while we were looking at this, i glanced down and this is amazing, and it is on top of a book, it is ridiculous and

amazing. >> i am interested in the serendipity of these still life compositions. when he got to the garbage and to see the arrangement of objects that is completely spontaneous. it is probably one of the least thought of compositions. people are getting rid of this stuff. it holds no real value to them, because they're disposing of it. >> we're here in another recology studio with abel. what attracted you to apply for this special program? >> who would not want to come to the dump? but is the first question. for me, being in a situation that you're not comfortable in has always been the best. >> what materials were you immediately attracted to when you started and so what was available here? >> there are a lot of books. that is one of the thing that hits me the most. books are good for understanding, language, and art

in general. also being a graphic designer, going straight to the magazines and seeing all this printed material being discarded has also been part of my work. of course, always wood or any kind of plastic form or anything like that. >> job mr. some of the pieces you have made while you have been here. -- taught me through some of the pieces you have made while you have been here. >> the first thing that attracted me to this was the printed surface. it was actually a poster. it was a silk screen watercolor, about 8 feet long. in terms of the flatwork, i work with a lot of cloddish. so being able to cut into it come at into it, removed parts, it is part of the process of negotiating the final form. >> how do you jump from the two dimensional work that you create to the three-dimensional? maybe going back from the 3f to

2d. >> everything is in the process of becoming. things are never said or settled. the sculptures are being made while i am doing the collages, and vice versa. it becomes a part of something else. there's always this figuring out of where things belong or where they could parapets something else. at the end goal is to possibly see one of these collage plans be built out and create a structure that reflects back into the flat work. >> thank you so much for allowing "culturewire" to visit this amazing facility and to learn more about the artists in residence program. is there anything you like our viewers to know? >> we have art exhibitions every four months, and a win by the public to come out. everybody is welcome to come out. we have food. sometimes we have gains and bands. it is great time. from june to september, we

accept applications from bay area artists. we encouraged artists from all mediums to apply. we want as many artists from the bay area out here so they can have the same experience. >> how many artists to do your host here? >> 6 artist a year, and we receive about 108 applications. very competitive. >> but everyone should be encouraged to apply. thank you again for hosting us. >> thank you for including us in "culturewire." ♪

>> you guys have some good lunch? always the worst to try to do a presentation after lung. : we'll try to make it through it. before we get started i'm supposed to make sure if you have a question, we have to use this microphone here. so, you have to wait till you get the microphone in front of you to ask a question he. * lunch that's the purpose for the audio and stuff. today we're going to talk about -- basically this is what i want to do here. i've been a detective for about six years now and been with the police department 15 years. prior to that i was in the united states army, military police corps. any [speaker not understood] here? just one? prior to that when i went to college i was always looking at graffiti.