Mayor Ford gets “down-and-dirty” on graffiti
Posted April 7, 2011 12:06 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO, Ont. – Dressed in jeans and a hole-filled sweater, Mayor Rob Ford rolled up his sleeves and picked up a power-washer to help clean graffiti from an alley on Thursday.
Ford put forth a valiant effort, blasting the tags from the walls at St. Clair Avenue West near Dufferin Street with some success, all in an attempt to set an example for his ongoing bid to the clean up the city.
“Actions speak louder than words, so let’s get some action going here,” Ford said.
Spitting out paint chips with his sweater drenched with water, Ford pointed out just how difficult it will be to wash the walls of the city clean.
“We’re going to get the city cleaned up, but nobody realizes how hard it is,” Ford said of blasting the walls. “You look at some, the white comes off, the black stays on forever, it’s almost like the printing industry and my printing company – black is the hardest ink to get off.”
brightcove.createExperiences();
Ford promised to get the entire city cleaned up, even if it had to be done brick-by-brick.
“It’s going to take hours, it’s going to take hundreds of hours, maybe even thousands of hours,” Ford said. “But we’re going to do it, we’re going to go brick-by-brick right across the city, and we’re going to get it cleaned up.
The mayor called the graffiti around the city “nonsense,” further enforcing his hardline stance on the state of graffiti in Toronto.
One thing Ford made very clear in his address, no matter how creative some graffiti may be, he does not consider it artwork, but instead, vandalism.
