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View Full Version : Graffiti at Joshua Tree Nat'l Park



Jody_S
14-Apr-2013, 21:26
From the article (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/us/california-park-closed/index.html?hpt=hp_t2):


To limit the impact of vandalism on historic sites, park rangers closed 308 acres of Rattlesnake Canyon until the end of the month, citing the escalating problem.

"Since January, individuals have defaced the day-use and canyon area of Rattlesnake Canyon with graffiti," the park said in a statement.

ghostcount
14-Apr-2013, 22:50
Sad.:(

Brian C. Miller
15-Apr-2013, 08:11
Let's see: vandals face a $5000 fine and six months imprisonment. Vandals have uploaded photographs of their graffiti to social media sites.

Will they really be that hard to catch?

dperez
15-Apr-2013, 08:37
They also had a problem with vandals at Barker Dam. The NPS had pictures of the graffiti on a flyer, asking for help identifying the culprits.

-DP

Scott Walker
15-Apr-2013, 11:40
I'm a huge fan of graffiti and think it has done an excellent job of beautifying a lot of pretty lifeless architecture and train cars, but I don’t think the balance of the world’s landscape needs help from graffiti. Too bad that mentality exists, I honestly do not understand why a person feels the urge to paint up a bunch of rocks or carve their name into a 100 year old tree.

Heroique
15-Apr-2013, 12:00
The Anasazi trashed the high desert Southwest. :(

As we all know, aliens abducted them and ended the madness.

Maybe the spaceships will return and get the new vandals.

Drew Wiley
15-Apr-2013, 12:04
Well, one of our late Presidents did exactly that kind of thing. Now his youthful vandalism allegedly has historical importance.
But he's the fellow who said that if you've seen one redwood tree you've seen em all. Here in Calif they carve their names on
trees thousands of years old. I even know of a rather famous outdoor photographer who sawed a limb off what was then
regarded as the oldest tree in the world and put on his fireplace mantle. I recently went up the street to our neighborhood park to photograph some spectacular lichen with my 8x10 which has been there undisturbed for generations. It had just been
spray painted by some brainless idiot.

Heroique
15-Apr-2013, 12:24
Well, one of our late Presidents did exactly that kind of thing. Now his youthful vandalism allegedly has historical importance. But he’s the fellow who said that if you've seen one redwood tree you've seen em all.

That reminds me – during the Lewis & Clark expedition, Clark carved his initials on Pompeys Pillar, a rock formation near Billings, Montana next to the Yellowstone River. Glad he wasn’t thinking about the environment. It’s pretty exciting to see!

Drew Wiley
15-Apr-2013, 12:34
I once drove out of my way to see some vandalism by the earliest Spanish explorers in New Mexico. Maybe all those hand
prints in the caves in Europe were how the young punks tried to mess up the paintings of their ancestors. Around here every
commercial building in sight has been thorougly tagged. If they catch them, they should be handed a toothbrush and a can
of paint remover, and should have to scrub it all off themselves, even if it took them all summer. Or deport them to Singapore and have them caned. But they wouldn't learn anything anyway. Their brains have already been rotted out by all that aerosol solvent. Frankly, I think our beloved late president should have been caned for what he did too.

Tin Can
15-Apr-2013, 12:56
Last time I was in that area, decades ago, I was amazed how many people shoot big holes in those defenseless Saguaros. Thank God, in Chicago we only shoot each other...

cps
15-Apr-2013, 14:31
I am a Washington DC resident and have recently discovered a trend toward taggers marking trees in the woods of Rock Creek park. On one trail I was on yesterday, every large tree (many of them easily over 100 years old) had large, garishly painted tags on them for a few hundred yards. The jerks also painted up a prominent rock. Thankfully they didn't get deeper into the woods. But, since it seems some other tagger/competitor has recently crossed out the initial tags with yet more spray paint, one can only imagine that days are numbered for the unadulterated trees deeper along the trail.

Certainly the paint is a new twist, and it is incredibly ugly, but in almost every instance the paint covered decades of people's carvings in the trees' bark.

Seeing the defaced trees left me pretty depressed.

Chris

Kevin Crisp
15-Apr-2013, 16:27
I was out photographing in the Lucerne Valley Saturday in CA. At one of my favorite abandoned homesteads (abandoned at least 20 years ago) somebody cut down the large picturesque tree which was out front of the house a month ago. The porch also looked pulled off. At nearby rocks (overhangs and some little arches) in addition to some new trash like old doors and a pink sink, there was a painted palm tree on the rock and somebody's nickname. Two other homesteads have been burned down in the last 6 months. A stucco property has been stripped of all its stucco (is that stuff reusable?) and now stands as uninteresting studs and partial roof. A 4th homestead which was standing 6 months ago has collapsed, with help. Another house had a white supremacist saying painted on the front in white spray paint. It was anti-Semitic with the usual poor spelling.

I can't fathom the need to mark or destroy out here. Even though this place is local for me, I've learned to photograph places I find like it's my one chance, since it may be.

Jody_S
15-Apr-2013, 21:38
Thankfully the vandals in my area of the woods don't have cars, and don't like to walk long distances. I was really depressed when I read that article. Not that I haven't photographed graffiti here in Montreal, but I usually go to open ruins that serve as unofficial community spaces. Tags and larger works on private buildings make my blood boil, and defacing a National Park goes several steps past that.

Chuck Pere
16-Apr-2013, 06:12
Well here in the midwest it's always been hard to find an unmarked large beech tree. Too bad because they make a beautiful B&W subject.