San Francisco Blog

taken the Rolling Stones’ decorating advice quite literally, leaving large swaths of the sidewalk near Dolores Park resembling the blacked-out documents scoured by government lawyers.

As Bugs Bunny would put it, “Of course you know, this means war.”

“They would paint over the stencils in black, so then we’d re-stencil it in white. Then they’d paint over it in white and we’d re-do it in black,” one of the duo told me (they remain anonymous as stenciling is considered vandalism by the City – and you can hold off on the subpoena because I don’t know their names.).

The tit-for-tat monkey-wrenching is good for a chuckle, but it brings up a worthwhile question: Why would anyone think a blotchy rectangle of white or black paint on the pavement is a better circumstance than an innocuous stencil? It seems this is the municipal equivalent of picking a pimple.

Merle Goldstone coordinates the City’s “Graffiti Watch” program. She wouldn’t choose the pimple analogy but she agreed that it doesn’t make sense for graffiti-fighters to leave large, unsightly marks on City streets.

“We don’t advise our volunteers to touch the sidewalks,” she said. “Those have to be power-washed.”

Between 80 and 100 City residents are part of Goldstone’s program. They receive a two-and-a-half hour tutorial on how to most efficiently clean graffiti and are given free safety glasses, gloves, brushes and many gallons of paint (a “starter kit” includes up to eight gallons). Graffiti Watch volunteers are trained to match colors and even use dropcloths, so Goldstone says it wasn’t one of her people who clumsily painted over The Strangers’ stencils. I was unable to determine if the City’s Parks and Recreation Department was involved, but it seems unlikely a City employee would think it was a smart idea to paint the sidewalks.

That can mean only one thing: We’re dealing with anti-graffiti vigilantes.

And that leads us to a modern-day koan: If an overly vigilant anti-graffiti volunteer leaves a huge painted mess on municipal property in his wake, is he guilty of creating graffiti?

Goldstone isn’t sure – but she isn’t ruling it out.

“I can’t answer that,” she said. “If people are trying to clean up graffiti and they haven’t been asked to do it by the City, I don’t know what the legal status of that is.”

She urges the vigilantes to give up their Lone Ranger act and join Graffiti Watch. She’ll even score you some paint.

Meanwhile, after painting it black for weeks, The Strangers are ready to wave the white flag. The duo told me they won’t be doing any more re-stenciling.

“They can paint over them in broad daylight. But we have to work at night,” one of them told me. “It’s just a matter of time before we’d get caught.”