All language subtitles for Vigilante.Vigilante.The.Battle.for.Expression.2011.WEB.H264-AEROHOLiCS

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
- George Orwell

Produced by Max Good and Nathan Wollman

Associate Producer: Scott Pouroy

Edited by Julien de Benedictis

Animation by Owen Cook

We are spending over 10 million dollars a year
to take down graffiti.

Directed by Max Good

When you see shootings and things like that happening in our city,

they start from tagging and defacing people's property.

Having caused thousands of dollars
in graffiti-related damage over the last year and a half,

Ralph Mirabal was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

They put up a tag and I have to walk down the street

and look at it. Is that a crime against me?

VIGILANTE VIGILANTE: The Battle for Expression

Here's the deal, we're looking for this vigilante guy

who does all this silver spray paint all around downtown,
around campus and Shattuck area.

He does that?
Is it one guy, just one person?

I think it's one guy but it could be more than one

probably one guy.

So if I give you a couple bucks,
will you keep an eye for us.

Yeah, if I see a guy with a spray paint can,
what do you want me to do to him?

Don't do anything,
just see what he looks like or maybe ask him what he's doing

or why he's doing it.

OK, I'll try to get his name, maybe his nickname..

Why is he just damaging things?

Yeah, that's what we want to know.

Since the first humans etched images onto cave walls,

others have been there to erase their work.

Whether because of annoyance, fastidiousness, or simply duty,

In the 1970s,
graffiti exploded into a cohesive movement in Philadelphia,
New York, and other US cities.

Subway trains were a favorite of graffiti writers

because they carried names
and messages throughout the city.

Some felt threatened by the markings, and in 1989,

the New York authorities decided to draw the line.

They did what many thought was impossible:

they rid the trains of graffiti nearly completely.

The act of eliminating a piece of graffiti
is now known as “buffing”

and the people who do it as “buffers.”

New York’s clean subway trains
were the first milestone in the history of buffing.

As graffiti has spread to major cities
and small towns throughout the world,

many different strategies and technologies
have been employed by the buffers.

Some cities have nearly eliminated graffiti,

often through strict laws and buffing regimens.

Buffers are usually employed by the city
or by a property owner

and held to certain standards.

But in recent years, we’ve seen a new phenomenon:
vigilante buffers now take on the battle against graffiti

as a personal crusade and see breaking the law
as the only effective way to win the fight.

Are you guys graffiti removal people?

Yes we are.

Was wondering if you guys might have ever heard
of someone called the Silver Circle.

He was a famous graffiti buffer out here,
his name was Ron Engman, Portland, Oregon.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Silver Circle vigilante was in inner city Portland,
in the suburbs.

I mean it seemed like he buffed faster than the city.

He was on top of the whole fucking game.

You could not get shit up, at all,
without him dissing it within 24 hours.

I mean the word "vigilante" is just great isn't it.
I mean look at the popular movies, right,

it's always just kind of that rogue guy,
Bruce Willis or something.

The vigilante is a chronic figure,
it comes up in popular culture a great deal,

but it's a fantasy that an individual
could right the wrongs of society,

you know like the classics are
Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood.

It's the law. Well then the law is crazy.

Bad people are doing bad things to innocent people
and one guy...can stop that.

They were rocking an HOD throw
on a truck in Southeast Portland.

Car drove past, fucking hit the block, looped around

and dude came running out man,
an old man with a fucking big gray beard.

Baap.
He hit Grease twice on the side of his head with a hammer
and basically they just ran, you know.

If you define a vigilante as somebody
who is so motivated by their values

that they begin to operate
outside the of the confines of legality

or of mainstream networks of communication,
if that's what a vigilante is,

then a graffiti writer is a vigilante, a social vigilante.

On the other hand, some vigilantes do want get rid of graffiti
or clean up the community

or make it free of graffiti and
I think they're both reaching out in non-normative ways.

You know, human beings have been making marks uh,
that we know of, for 45,000 years.

For the most part, graffiti is a way of saying something and

and it's driven by a creative urge within somebody,
it's an outlet for creative expression.

This is a different kind of expression,
it's almost an expression of repression,

of pushing down, of covering, of eliminating.

The silver and gray are I think used here
because it's the absence of any color,

its a true anti-statement, anti-art,
it's like a blackhole in the middle of something.

They mean less than anything. Less than nothing.

He got busted at least 6-8 times.
First 5 times, he got let loose,

they were just like OK, you're a citizen,
you're trying to do the right thing,

you want to get of these like punk graffiti writers and shit,
because nobody likes graffiti writers.

And so, you know, they kept letting him but they kept saying

you need to stop doing that and he didn't stop.

When he finally got like busted busted, arrested, put in jail,
I was stoked!

You know what I'm saying, it's only right,
he was going out in the late night,
just like we were and spray painting stuff.

Vigilantes are kind of this populist movement
in that they see themselves as beyond politics,

they see themselves as distrustful of yet supportive of society.

They see themselves as beyond but part of government
and to have that kind of hubris

to believe what you're doing everyday is somehow
going to save some segment of society,

really makes you an admirable slash crazy individual.

We're rolling here

So who is the Silver Buff?

The Silver Buff is a anti-graffiti vigilante vandal,
that's how I like to put it.

I started noticing his work couple years ago.
I could tell his buffing work was not the city,

it was the work of vigilante.
For somebody to go out and essentially do graffiti
to eliminate graffiti seems very hypocritical,

very paradoxical to me.
Graffiti represents a voice, a free voice,
and that's extremely important to have in any society.

To have an outlet where you can express yourself
without any control and be heard by the people around you.

I think these vigilantes are trying maintain
the visual and aesthetic status quo.

They only want you to see the officially sanctioned messages,
they don't want any alternative voices to be heard.

And that's why I see it as something very sinister
and very wrong,
something that I'm dedicated to fighting against.

I got Nate involved
and we found an intersection up in North Berkeley
where he seemed to be especially active.

This phone booth right here is what
I would call his personal playground.

It was once like this blue and over time, last couple years,
it's become completely silver.

This sticker is gonna be put on the phone booth
and then he's gonna come and paint it.

If two people approach him with a camera, he's done.
He's either run for it or he's just gonna fucking give up.

How's it going?

What do you guys got going on tonight?

We're doing a little film project.

That's what we got the call about.
Who you guys working for?
And why are you guys doing it at night?

We're just doing sort of a nighttime lurking film.
I had the camera up and you had the binoculars,
we were both looking through.

Everything came out clear.
I recommend not filming right now at this time.
We just had two robberies...

Really.

..via you know threat.
And all night long, we're looking for people
who are suspicious in vehicles, walking around,
and this is very suspicious.

We wouldn't be filming ourselves robbing anybody.

Of course not, but like I explained to you,
staking out, doing some reconnaissance,

these are the things that we look out for,
this is not normal, ok?

Understood, we're out of here.
I appreciate it gentleman, for your cooperation,
here's your stuff back.

The “Broken Windows Theory,” introduced by James Q. Wilson
and George Kelling in 1982,
has become the most prevalent rationale

for a vigilant response against graffiti.
The theory states that minor “quality of life crimes”
such as vandalism, public drinking,

panhandling, and homelessness contribute to a sense of
lawlessness and thus to more serious crimes.

The theory was most famously implemented
by police chief Bill Bratton and mayor Rudolph Giuliani
during the 1990s in New York City.

Many see New York’s drop in crime as concrete proof
supporting the theory, while many others question
its logic and priorities.

The Broken Windows Theory appeals
to middle class fears about street crime and decay

while completely ignoring structural and economic forms
of damage and corruption.

There was no bias involved in what George Kelling and I wrote.
We were not interested in the structure of American society

or class differences or racial differences,
we were making an argument

that the police should spend a lot of their resources
making communities feel good and look good

because when you do that the public responds very effectively.

If you improve public order, this will have the effect of
driving down the crime rate because with more decent people

on the street and fewer criminals on the street,

the crime rate will go down because
the good people are controlling the streets.

Graffiti is important symbolically

because graffiti conveys the sense that decent people
do not control the neighborhood
and that is what makes it so unsettling.

Once that was pointed out,
public authorities took it very seriously.

It's an uphill struggle but they've made this commitment
and I think it's a healthy commitment.

Who decides what constitutes order or disorder,
very important question.

There is no rulebook that tells you how to do these things.
You have to have a conversation.

All of the serious studies I know about
support the broken windows theory.

Now in time somebody will come up with a study
that doesn't support it.
That's the nature of social science.

You just go back and forth on these things,
but I'm confident personally,
that what George and I did was the right thing
and most people believe it.

Don't put graffiti in my area. Maybe one idiot would do it.

GRAFFITI GUERILLA

In 1991 there was the Rodney King beating
followed by the riots in 1992 when the officers were acquitted.

What happened was, I sold carpet, I was in Koreatown that day.
The Koreans were arming themselves, it was crazy,

so I decided screw this.
The riot progressed through the city.
Some guys ended up in our neighborhood actually looting.

So I had this little tool that punctures peoples tires.
People that were taking stuff and looting it
and putting it in their car,

I started puncturing their tires, flattening their cars,
didn't deal with this guy.

I was breaking out people's windshields,
you know cause they were putting TV sets in their car.

If they put the TV set in their car, I broke the glass out.
Then I was drawn to this one guy's car,

he had looted some liters of Coke from 7-11
and he starts sticking doo rags in them
and soaking the rags in gas.

I walked up to him I said,
"You are not setting this fucking building on fire,
I don't give a fuck who you are, you're getting
the fuck out of here right now."

Pulls up his thing, he's got two guns.
So I wound up testifying against this guy
and they didn't convict him, did not, got off.

This guy was such a hardcore gangmember,
I was supposed to be in the witness protection plan.

The guy in the FBI says well not only is he well not guilty
and we can't retry him again, but we don't have

any more money for the witness protection program,

so you're going to have to stay in Los Angeles.
For two weeks I didn't go into work,
I slept in a bathtub in my house.

Fuck the system.

In 1993 when our neighborhood,
they decided to take their neighborhood back.

A meeting was called in someone's house
and they had 8 things on a list on a wall.

So the last thing was graffiti, so they said you in the back,
uh, you got graffiti. So I laughed, I'm like well shit,

this is gonna be easy cause there's no graffiti.
So then I went out the next day to the alley

and the whole thing was covered.
And I'm like holy shit, what am I getting myself into.

See over here on this thing,
see they got stickers all over this sign.
That's like so simple to take care of that.

I got up at 3 and 4 in the morning, I'd go out and paint graffiti,
come back, change my clothes, shower, go out to work at 6,

come back from at work at 6,
barely grab something to eat with my wife,
say hi to my kids, go back out until midnight.

That went on probably for 13 years.

They hate this because of shit like this and that's the problem,
that's the problem. I had a vision that went
I got older there would be something and

I didn't know what it was, but it would involve colors and
a lot of just really weird, creative, funky stuff.
So when I got into this graffiti thing,
I said this is the vision I had when I was a kid.

A lot of the things in my life were completely out of control,
and now I totally control something, that is, man,
it's almost better than an orgasm.

We missed him, it was the only night
we didn't go out in the last several days.

It was raining and I didn't think he was gonna go
and we have no idea what time it was at.

I'm committed to make sure
he's covered every night from now on.
One of the things about doing this

is you start thinking everybody is the guy you're looking for,
when you're out on the street.

I just saw some guy on a bike getting off his bike couple times
and going over to some phone booth or something.

So, I'm gonna go check him out again,
see if he's up to no good.

He's been active two nights in a row,
so what we're gonna do is we're gonna

go up to the location and we're gonna park this thing
and we're just kind of gonna do some lurking.

He hit it.
Yeah he did.
He hit it.
He hit the spot.

Friday night, Saturday morning, sometime...
We have no idea exactly..

...sometime between 3am and 7:15am.
Our little digital camera kept running all night, amazingly.
For more than 2 hours, for hours.

It did. It ran all night. Yeah, it did.
This is what we got here, this is what he does,
this is what he just did.

There you go, there's the evidence.
He even did that, look at that.

I just saw that guy take a picture, dude.
Did he?
Yes.
He's reading the paper.
I don't give a fuck, I just saw him take a fucking picture.

You're not just seeing things though, right? I don't know.
I don't know what I'm doing anymore, I don't know.

There was the guy on the bike
who was totally fucking covered in silver paint.

It could have been silver, it was a light color.
That guy was fucking taking a picture
of this trashcan though right here.

Really?
I mean when I told you about that.
Yeah.
Alright fuck it.

How you doing today sir?
I was wondering if you had noticed any
of the silver vandalism going on out here?

Any what!?
Have you noticed any of the silver spraypainting
in the neighborhood? On any of the...

Somebody's spraypainting things? (subtitled)
Yeah.
I haven't noticed.

I thought I saw you taking a picture or something.
I don't own a camera.

It started at 3:03am and the recording is an hour and 17.
It's just an hour and 17 minutes?

It's gotta be longer than that.
I thought it was still on.
It was, man!

No, is that a person, I thought there could be a person
in the dark there, but I don't think so.

Not cool, dude.
It isn't that cool.

Now graffiti when you're an outsider, it's hard to understand,
you see a lot of scrawl,

what looks like scrawling or scribbling to you
and you may see some stuff that's colorful
but it's really hard to read

unless you've been around it for a long time.
Because it's hard to read and hard to understand,
people are very threatened by it.

I've now put out a book about the Bay Area Graffiti culture,
the first book about the Bay graffiti culture.

I think of San Francisco as a place genuinely has
embraced alternative cultures and alternative ways
of looking at the world and I see that changing a little bit.

Well this is a spot that
in the graffiti world was called Tire Beach.
Essentially this whole park and this whole area

was a major graffiti location for quite a few years.
This is a place where generally speaking police
would not bother people doing the graffiti.

If you have a wall that's allowed to run for many many years,
you end up with an accumulation of greater and greater quality

because the good stuff lasts and the bad stuff gets gone over.

When I just beginning to get interested in graffiti,
I was blown away when I walked into this park.

I can leave my house, 10 minutes later I can go to
this cool park by the bay and I can see all this amazing art.
And now it's just a big green wall.

It's completely ugly by comparison
and doesn't do anything to make me want to be in this park.

It was the usual kind of graffiti removal theory:
if people are allowed to paint in one area

even if it's not disturbing anybody, the culture is invigorated.
So if you stamp it out here, you know,
you're contributing to the demise of the culture.

Graffiti is not street art, it is a crime.
To the vandal:

now is the time to give up your life of graffiti vandalism
and channel your love of art into legal ways of expressing it.

For me, the discussion doesn't end when you say it's illegal.
In fact, that's kind of where the discussion begins.

When you see these anti-graffiti bits of propaganda, a video
or some pamphlet, what they always emphasize is the tags,

the stuff that's done over windows
or in some place that people find very offensive.

Endlessly connecting graffiti to gangs,
endlessly connecting graffiti to larger criminal activity,
to destructiveness, to violence.

They're often wildly exaggerated when city officials discuss
how to address graffiti or why it needs to be addressed.

Fundamentally graffiti is disrespect.
It's disrespect for people, it propagates violence, misogyny.

This is the beginning of people becoming hardcore criminals.
When you see shootings and things like that
happening in our city,

they start from tagging and defacing people's property
and they just keep on growing and growing
and then we start seeing a lot of murders in the city.

You start by just painting somebody's property,
you know, do a little bit of that,

you know, maybe you start doing a little drugs,
start getting a little high. But then you graduate to robbery,

you graduate to shooting. You put that tag up today,
hopefully before the end of the day, it's gone.

We're now empowering residents and people who
have joined our program to buff out any graffiti that they see.

That's San Francisco Green right there.
This is Nuru Green

It's easy for me to take this, hand it to you
and say when you see graffiti, just spray it out.

The city has been involved in this kind of crackdown
against graffiti for a good 5 years at least.

The result of the campaign has been
I would say virtually total success

from the point of view of the people trying to eliminate graffiti.

That is, both the culture
and the graffiti itself have been basically eliminated.

Along with the intense buffing activity,
the put in place a variety of laws that force property owners
to clean up their own graffiti.

That had a couple of effects. One is to build
a kind of resentment against the graffiti culture

and against graffiti because property owners felt
more victimized by the graffiti I think then they used.

You know, you're forced to pay money
to clean it up or be fined.

I don't want to go out
into a city that's fullof gray and green and drab walls.

I mean that sort of makes me feel like I'm living in
a, I don't know, former Soviet Union or something like that.

I want to see walls that are filled with color,
that are personal expression and graffiti

is part of that equation and that's one of the reasons
I love living in a city.

What if I went out and buffed graffiti with
the wrong color and I made more of a mess
than what was already there?

Who says? Who says, because a lot of people, let me tell you,
I do it as a job, and a lot of people,
they don't even care about the color

as long as you get the graffiti off their building, their happy.
Respecting other people's property,

that's the main gist. Because you're an American citizen
that's already been formatted, you're in a culture

of America and America, if you think for one second that
you're gonna change that, cause America's about advertising.

I grew up, I have respect for society, I don't go tagging
on anyone's building, I've never tagged in my life,

I never did, cause I respect other people's property
like my dad taught me.

Graffiti is left as a criminal monument,
mainly to promote the defacer, that's all

it is, it's teenage energy to show guys,
show their buddies how brave they are, that's all it is.

That's the thing that makes it so hard to talk to folks.
You guys have your set opinions already.
Listen to this, my job is I vandalize vandalism.

But also the idea of the whole terminology...

Just gonna scratch the lens a little bit
with my initials, you mind?
Hey man, don't touch the lens with a key.

What's the problem.
What the fuck are you doing?

I'm defacing property, it's a public expression. It's a public
expression, you've got to prioritize man, why are you
so concerned about the lens of a camera, prioritize.

Excuse me, you seem to be emotionally distraught,
and you need to get some help. What's your name?

Why don't you guys just settle down?

Hey, here's reality here: we have a problem in this city.
The bottom line is if the city had something in place,
I wouldn't be doing this.

GREY GHOST

After Katrina you know, we were a pretty screwed up city.
I mean it's like yeah, it's the Katrina story again,

but I mean it really was. My goal was
to make signs to put up around town to remind people

why New Orleans was such a great place.
We had a lot of people spraypainting on their house like
"I'll be back."

I was just driving one day and I saw "Nola rising"
spray painted on the side of a building

and I was like ah, that's such an awesome message.
And so I just took and ran

and it grew into a whole group and organization.
People could really spread their own version of positivity.

I think this city is full of vibrant life, vibrant music,
everything is colorful and lively

and to have everything grayed out
is just a sad state of affairs.

So I was trying to find this guy, this NoLA Rising guy.
I eventually did find him.

We kind of worked together and did this story
and a lot of it had to do with Fred and
what Fred was doing to Michael Dingler's work.

Nola Rising was prosecuted for doing over
a thousand different pieces of cardboard on telephone poles.

I don't want to be associated with people
that are out there doing vandalism.

Do you think that's vandalism?

Hi this message is for Fred Radtke, my name is
Nate Wollman and I'm working on a documentary project

concerning the lives of graffiti abatement professionals
such as yourself. You are someone of interest to us.

Was wondering if maybe you'd like to meet up
for an interview and talk about some of your techniques.

There's the gray, there's the evidence.

Is that Radtke?
That's fucking him dude...let's get out.

Mr. Radtke sir, sir, I came all the way
from California to interview you.
I'm doing a documentary on graffiti...

Sir, you're doing it the wrong way.
We've been trying everything.
You're doing it the wrong way, sir.

How can we talk with you?
Not today.

Hey what's up?
We got him.
What do you mean?

He came around 6:45, I got him,
I saw the footage, we fucking got him.
Oh my god.

Excuse me sir, are the person who does all this community service?

No.
You're not?
I don't know what you mean. What do you mean?

You do all this community service
you paint over things, you pick up garbage.

Well, I do some of that, yeah.
Yeah?
So?

SILVER BUFF

Did you notice?
Max: No, I didn't know.

Well, come on up the street,
I think there's probably still some left from yesterday.
You've heard of rappers, well there's slappers.

Slappers?
Slappers slap um their identity on every
you know every conceivable place.

There's uh, there's 3000 of these in Berkeley.
3000 of these poles?

Yeah. General order 95 rule 31.0 says uh
"Thou shalt not attach to...unauthorized attachment."
Nobody seems to know that.

And how long have you been doing this?
Early 90s I guess.
Early 90s, wow.

That's somebody's ID, identity.
You erase it?
Cover it.

How many mornings a week do you do this,
is it a full time job almost?

No, almost every morning.
This is a very useful scraper thing...
this used to be square on the top.

Did you go to Cal?
Oh yeah, I was in city planning.
Believe it or not,

but this has nothing to do with that.
You mark anything, city property
or private property with your paint, you could be in trouble.

So you're not actually tagging anything?
Well, you can, I don't what's the definition of tagging.

I mean like,
I'm not trying to put my identity out there, particularly.
Yeah, that's the guy I told you about.

He and the pig face guy
are probably number 1 and 2 on posting.

What annoys you most about this stuff,
it's just dirty, it's illegal?
How do we get to this point?

Exactly. Start in city planning.
No, it's a privatization of public space, the way I see it.

To me, they're trying to say, this is our space,
we're going to use it and screw the rest of you
and I don't like that attitude.

That's you?
Well, I'm not going to admit to it, but see,
I could probably get arrested for that.
Yeah

Graffiti is illegal and if participate in it,
you are specifically disregarding the law
and that's a beautiful thing.

Graffiti is a way of democratizing the public space,
making it public in a real way.

It's not saying I'm the only one who gets to do this,
it's saying we get to do this, anybody can do this.

I can't classify the kind of people who do graffiti
cause you got people that do graffiti
that come from good homes,

you got people that do graffiti that's homeless,
that's drug addicts, you got people that
do graffiti that's trying to do it for the money,

you got people who do graffiti that's for the fame
and you got people that call themselves taggers,
you got people that call themselves piecers.

I don't know what the fuck I am,
I'm just gonna say I'm a contributor.

My world view is through the eyes of a graffiti writer.
I felt like was finding my identity while I was doing it.

It's a very basic, a very basic need,
to be part things, to engage with one's world.

I really wanted to be part of the infrastructure.
I feel like writers are very responsible people

because they're pointing where there could be art,
where there should be messages.

The fun of graffiti is not just the art itself,
but it's the art in the environment.

It's seeing how the graffiti writer takes advantage of
the unique characteristics of wherever they're painting.

I'm definitely motivated by like coming off
humorous or bizarre. I never wanted to

paint things where it like builds up a personality
of trying to be super tough.
I definitely always wanted to be up,

but to let you know that things could
be funny and you could have a good time with graffiti.

For me it's always felt rad, like a communication.
When I'd get fucking just bored

or not know what to do with myself,
I'd just leave the house and walk from Brooklyn

all the way through Manhattan and back again.
Come back at like 5am, leaving all those notes out there,
saying hi to people, what up.

It's just the flow of everything, just the way paint flares
when I'm hitting up with a fatcap or a phantom,

it's just like kinetic energy. So that's like my ultimate high.
Cause I don't get high, I don't drink, I don't smoke,
never done that shit in my life.

Graffiti is therapeutic and sometimes people have
to do graffiti to work things out.

And you have to be free to create without restraints sometimes
I'm painting for everybody's who's gotta go to work everyday

and everybody who sees the same boring walls.
Just to splash a little bit of mysticism in there,

just to snap people out of their routine.
Maybe we're more free than we thought.

It's more than free, it's like, it's an art form
that hasn’t been tampered with by people who are trying

to fucking make money off everything, so it's true,
it's the same as it was when it started.
It was all about getting up

and being individual and being original.
I never got into graffiti to be some like Picasso;

I got into graffiti to write on shit and fucking
be a vandal and be like a fucking kid and be free.

And I guess some people like to look at boring ass walls.
Like they just like to look, they're bored,

they're boring ass people. Think about New York
with no graffiti, it's fucking a boring looking ass place.

I do it because I like my work to be in front of people.
It's not about legal or illegal.

It's about no barriers between the public and the art;
it's about populism.

I no longer subscribe to this notion
that there is the good graffiti and the bad graffiti.

There just nothing like seeing an amazing tag
because what you're really looking at
is an amazing piece of calligraphy.

The reason that I respect a seemingly simplistic graffiti tag
is because I understand what goes into
a seemingly simplistic graffiti tag.

I understand the performance behind it.
For example, you have a Sleez tag

and I can see the Sleez tag in my mind's eye
this nonstop SLEEZ, the Z coming down

into a swirl and I can see the body movement that went into it,

I could see Sleez had to be covert
when doing this tag on the wall,
I could see the shaking of the can,

I can see Sleez in action performing that tag,
and it's a beautiful ballet of graffiti making.

And just being so focused, like ahh,
there's kinda nothing else in the world
going on in your head other than where your at right then.

There's no room for anything.

We've all got mediums that make us feel better.
Some people do wheelies on motorcycles,

some motherfuckers bake cakes and shit
at the bakery and spray the whipped cream
and they feel like they an artist

and they feel good about theyself.
So I mean it's all about how you handle life.

I love the passion to change your environment.
Without that passion, we accept what is given

to us structurally, we accept what is given to us
aesthetically and we go to sleep and we die.

18th Street.
You got some gangs, somebody took the sticker, somebody
took another sticker down here, this guy's got no skills.

Then if the parents don't stop them, they did their backpack,
they did their room, they did their garage, they did their shoes,

they did their pants, and then they, and then
if no one stops them, they go down the street,

nobody stops them, they go to the bus line
and they go to the bus benches, they go to the boards.

So you just follow the trail back to the house, you talk to them.

When I was growing up, I was from a huge family
and I was like the tail end of all

the cousins and my brothers and all that,
so was like the last one in line, oh you wait your turn,

everyone road blocks you, you know, you can't have that.
Plus I was smaller so,

it was a household and an environment where
it was massively competitive but nobody
ever talked about losing anything.

OK, I like run 3 or 4 square miles of the city of Los Angeles.
I actually think I run that shit.

The city and county spend almost $2 million dollars.
I can take care of graffiti in that same area for $15,000.

So, see that's gonna show up now.
See when they use acrylics,
you can just knock it down with this.

What were gonna do now is we're going
to use some of my chemicals, it will get rid of that.

Get a little bit of that and that's it.
9 times out of 10, I'll have have you painting your own graffiti down.

See you're already starting to laugh, you think that's a funny story.
And I have gangs just come out here
and help me paint their own shit down.

If you're a latino person walking by this alley,
here's Latino gang threats.

Let's say the guy that wrote that stuff is sitting right there.
Let's say you think it's really cool to have a bald head.

But the problem when you're walking by this
and this guy thinks you're with them, he's gonna shoot you.

So the same guy with the same guy
walking by with no graffiti, won't say anything to him.

That's how weird it is. That's how weird this whole business is.

When they paint it out, the city paints like this,
and they make your tag bigger, it's like they're so stupid.

My god, are you serious? I mean this is just crazy.
So you take care of these too.

Why can't they have something up that might be important.
Yeah it is important, I'm sure.

Most of these things, lost dogs and all that,
if the dog's brought back in 3 weeks, the dog's gone,
it ain't coming back.

Wow, now you tell me what you think looks better,
tell me what you think looks better, all that shit or that?

These guys all run out of Melrose. See now another sticker
on top of a sticker, so I'm gonna have to talk to my boys at KOG

and tell them they can't put their shit up in my area anymore.
No. Ahh, takes the color out.

Chaka! Oh my god, from his art show.
This is my boy Chaka. I was at that art show.

He's got good stickers. He's not supposed
to be doing this, it's a violation of his parole,

so I'm actually now saving him
from being arrested by taking this sticker down.

Look how long this takes, you see,
better than a can of spray paint right.

I know they're gonna keep putting graffiti up,
it's an addiction, they're not gonna stop.

I don't care about the graffiti vandalism, to me its,
maybe kind of in a weird kind of way,

it's I can't do it, so maybe by associating with it,

it's me vicariously living through them, but uh,
I would never vandalize someone's property.

When Fred Radtke uses the gray paint,
he's marking his territory.

He's making himself the greatest tagger in New Orleans.

And you know, it's a shame he doesn't have more talent
because he definitely gets up more than anybody else.

I like to see the gray on me because I know
there's no graffiti out there once we get done.

This isn't just about him painting over graffiti anymore.
He told me that all the kids that do graffiti

are completely irresponsible,
they're degenerates, they have no hope, they're druggies,
that he's tried, that there's no way reform these kids.

And not only do they do drugs, they can actually,
when they run out of drugs, they can rob tourists walking by.
There's a hotel down the street.

If I run out of drugs, I go to Fred's house cause
I heard he's got a shit load of them.

I got no problem with buff, but this guy, man, he's on one.

Doing the word "Top Mob" is terrorism, it's not art.

I looked over here and I saw some graffiti
back here and I saw this dude painting over it.

I'm like "holy shit, dude, is that the Grey Ghost?"

I hear some maniac running up on me,
"Get the fuck outta here, what the fuck."

So I turn around, I'm just like
"Whoa, cool man, I'm gone, dude."

And I try to like walk out of here.
Comes up to me with his paint roller and starts

I'm kind of like blocking it over here
and by then he's already like started to

hit me on the head with this paint roller and
he caught me right back here, big old gash mark in my head.

I didn't realize until he drove off
and I'm drenched in blood.
I'm like, "wow, that guy really is a complete psychopath."

He'll take a TV crew out with him from of the local
stations and then talk about how you know graffiti has tripled

and sometimes it's in the last year
and sometimes it's in the last 10 years,

whatever number he's pulling out of his butt.

But what you have over there is graffiti has tripled.

I would love to see you know his quantitative statistics on that.

Down 65% overall in the city, 85% in the French Quarter

I did a little research on him afterwards
and I came to find out that he's a marine

and he fought in Desert Storm.
If you're trained by the military to kill people,

hitting somebody with a paint roller
could be considered assault with a deadly weapon.

Any time I'd go to the precinct or the courthouse
and try to ask for something, as soon as I'd walk in the door,

they'd just kind of be like "uhh, who's this kid and
what does he want." I had the police report and everything,

I'm like hey is there anything going on with this?

And they're like, "oh yeah, we're looking into it,
we're investigating." And I shouldn't of said

anything about the Grey Ghost because
I think that might've turned them off to it

being that he's a friend of the city.
I don't know what goes through his head,

I don't know why he does what he does.
He's bored, wants to be a hero, umm,
doesn't have any friends.

At first I wasn't sure, it's a story
but not a great story, so I wasn't that excited about it.

But then when I started to learn more about it,
when you guys started telling me more about it,
it turned out to be a great story.

Well Sharp was definitely uneasy when
I first talked to him. You know, he said right off the bat,

"I don't want to admit to anything
about spraypainting Berkeley silver."

In the end he was fully admitting
that he was involved, he was kind of proud about it really.

I get a thrill out of changing behavior I guess,
in what I regard as a positive way.

What would you say to people who said that you're doing the same thing,
sort of doing your personal mark on the street and making it private in your way?

Well, I'm not trying to do, I'm trying to..
see I think that if you walk down the street

there's all this information bombarding you and to me,
it's more noise. I'd rather have less noise, visual noise.

I think it's pretty clear that Jim Sharp
has only made the graffiti, tagging problem worse in Berkeley.

Honestly, it's bad for the city because
it makes you think more diabolical.

You're like alright, if he's gonna buff every fucking newstand,
let's go hit all the windows down Shattuck

and then you hit all the windows
and he can't fucking write silver over it.

For the city, I would think about how
it could escalate into more vandalism.

Talking to the city of Berkeley and
the Berkeley Police Department,
I don't think they're interested in graffiti at all,

they couldn't really care about graffiti, that it's not
a priority for them whatsoever, and so by extension,

Jim Sharp and his vigilantism against graffiti
also wasn't interesting to them.

You're not gonna stand there?
Well, yeah...

On camera?
Hey, I don't care about the camera.

If you keep on holding that thing up I'm gonna smack it out
of your hands one of these days, all right.

You're getting recorded here
You want to leave?
You should be smarter than that.

What did you think of the article?
Ahh, well I have a new name for you guys..
Who are we?

Stalkumentarians. I actually thought the newspaper
did a fairly bad job, I was kind of painted as a painter

and that's a really small part of what I do in the mornings.
Gutters. You know, that's like number 1. Remember this one?

Ethicus Ithicus, what was it?
Earhata Erecta.
That's right.

It's also called Stebbin's grass.
You both have an eye for detail right?
I think you'd make pretty good weed abaters or blight..

He want's to turn us into abaters, Max.
Yeah.
He sees us as a possible abatement team.

Well, it takes an eye, to see things, alright.
You know Jim, we do respect your passion completely,

we respect your dedication but you've gotten out of control.

And you're the police now, right?
You're the de facto police, right?

No, we're just other citizens who have a perspective
and we can be heard and we can make a movie
and be heard that way.

Yeah, well but who's gonna see your movie, who's gonna care.
If it's a city zoning announcement it stays.

You don't look around at all the spray paint over the years,
the silver boxes and the silver stuff and feel
a little bit bad about that?

I think I would do some things a little differently.
Black I think works better in some surfaces than silver.

But if I had just two colors to work with, that's probably
what I'd, I think that makes some sense.

Doesn't that just look like a terrible mess to you?
Yeah it does, it calls attention to it, saying "clean me up"

and I'd like to see somebody come in the next day
or week and paint it the right color.

If there was one of us like a youngster a youth person
or somebody or like a true tagger or a writer doing that,

houses would get raided, shit would get stolen,
fools be going to jail, court dates, all that stuff would follow.

The fact that he can do what he's doing
with impunity and no one's stopping him,

I just think that speaks to the sickness of American society
and a lot of the injustice that takes place.

I mean it's crazy, I heard this one kid
getting 8 years for tagging.

Tears of remorse did not stop a judge from
handing out 8 years in prison to 18 year old Sebastian Perez.

Why do pick on these other fine citizens.
Why don't you knock yourself out spraying, tagging, marking

on your girlfriend's house or her mother's house,
your friend's house, Ms. White's house, your mother's house,
knock yourself out.

You will serve each count, each sentence consecutively.
One ends, you start the next,

the next one ends, you start the next. And we will see

how good you are on your promises to reform your life.

He's gonna go to prison with the murderers,
the robbers, and the real gangsters.

So for this little kindergarten crime that they commit,
now he better learn how to be a man real quick.

A lot of the drive to eliminate graffiti comes from
a fear of youth. I think there's a sort of fear

of the thuggish element of youth culture and
people somehow associate graffiti with thuggishness.

Hey mother, look at the artiste doing his art.
Ain't that beautiful mother!?

People respond to graffiti based on what films say
about graffiti or what others in their community say

about graffiti or what the local news says about graffiti.
But individuals ,

they don't take the time to really understand what the actual
graffiti marking or painting is doing socially for or to a community.

The problem is they only see the graffiti
as contributing to social ills.

I wish both the graffiti world and the street art
world would understand the politics of

what they're doing just in the act of creating
street art or graffiti.

You know, the fact that they are creating some sort of
protest with their actions, that this is a form of
property disobedience.

In doing so they're questioning property laws and ownership
and all of those things and who has the right to use public space.

As the economy has changed so has the way
in which we understand. Find the neighborhoods

with the most graffiti in New York or Los Angeles
and you're probably going to find neighborhoods

where it's a good idea to seek out cultural attractions,
things to do at night. Seek out the best food,

seek out the most diversity.
If you see graffiti, what you're probably seeing
is a neighborhood that is active.

Some graffiti is done with no more thought
than to mess things and cause a nuisance.

That doesn't the whole of graffiti;
there's still a lot of it out there that is done

with care and intention of making things better.

Well I go over corporate signage period, all the time.
There's a company called NPA City Outdoor

and they operate what are called street level billboards
and they failed to get permits through
the department of buildings

and therefore every location that they operate is illegal.
The NYSAT project was destructive,

so we went out and we took back 120 billboards,

we basically destroyed that property.
I mean the company obviously got us arrested,

the people sat in jail for the weekend.
And then when they had to come into court for
their court date,

the company again wasn't there. They didn't want to have
to explain to the judge, yes they were operating
illegal signage in the city.

It's funny, we just sort of just think it's ok
for large corporations
to bombard our visual landscape with their advertising,

but we're so riled up by seeing a tag on the side of a wall,

even a beautiful colorful piece on a wall,
many people find that very offensive.

You don't necessarily have to consume
what is being advertised but to understand

that advertising plays a significant role in society
and speaks to our culture and speaks for our culture
in many ways,

you have to respect advertising on that level,
same with graffiti.

Advertising is meant to manipulate you and
that's all it's there for. And people don't see that,

people don't see that as being a problem. One of the things
I find really interesting about people's responses

to outdoor advertising is this consistent explanation
that they don't look at it, that they don't see it.

I find in that statement a huge problem.
People having to ignore their space
while they walk through it, or consciously ignoring it.

I mean, what a terrible way to have to move
through something that should be considered yours.

There's one of the things I really love about public works,
street art and graffiti in general is that there's so many contradictions.

The public is made up of so many different people with
so many different opinions, who's opinions are all valid.

We all occupy the space, we all pay our taxes,
we all have a right to our opinion about it.

And so do you have to kind of negotiate everybody's interests
in this environment and those interests often collide
and do line up perfectly.

I think these buffers are on the wrong side,
they should be getting rid of the advertising.

I look at this, maybe in 1995, this would have pissed me off.

She's being controlled by graffiti, no. I'm controlling graffiti,
let them try to control me, and they won't control me.

But now, it's like, ahh, it doesn't even bother me.
I'm ok with your rebellion because I'm really extremely rebellious,

I hate authority, I don't do good with authority.
I just only seem to do good with dogs and kids and

I side more on the side of taggers and people outside of the box
than I do with people who are inside the box in the corporate world.

They've done nothing but take advantage of me my whole life.
A lot of my feistiness really comes from my grandmother.

Man I loved my grandmother, my grandmother
was like, man, meant the world to me.

How long ago did she pass?
She passed away in 1999 and then 40 days later,
35 days later or whatever that was, then we lost Adam.

And then over the next 4 or 5 years it was you know,
brothers, father, cousins, my first business mentor.

Just it was for me, I had to find a way to survive
and try to channel all that anxiety into something.

And so it's not only about the control, it's really the power
to make myself better. And so by controlling,

I, maybe am deluding myself into thinking
I'm making it better, but I'm also being positive.

My boy Dale from BAK, gone. Now next time I see him,
I'll Dale, seriously a tag at Carl's Jr. at the writer's bench.

And he'll say "wow, man you found that, that's dope man,
don't be doing that shit. Why can't you leave my shit up dude?"

You know so we all, so do I get angry?
No, it's like fun and games, fun and games.

No, graffiti guerrilla OG.
That's what's up man.
I ain't fucking around.

I'm probably the only buffer who likes graffiti art.
I mean like totally, I mean like getting people jobs.

No so you know if like somebody fucks with me,
I just put a line through their name
and I write 18th street, oh fuck.

So what would it take for you to stop?
Why do you ask that question?
Because I'd like you stop.

Why, why would you like me to stop... it might say
something about you which I don't think you
want anybody to know about.

I think you're suppressing free speech here, you don't
have to do this everyday, maybe you could do it once a week.

Free speech, well this is free speech if you consider it,
you'll notice that free speech has two sides to it at least.

Your kind of free speech is the speech that
suppresses other ability to speak, it's not the same thing.

Well, that's a philosophical difference we have I guess.

There's been a vigilante loose on the streets of Berkeley
since the early 90s. In his overzealous pursuit

of eliminating illegal markings, Sharp has become
the most prolific graffiti vandal the city has ever seen.

Indiscriminately tearing down legally placed posters
nearly every morning, whether they be for events,

lost pets, missing children, etc.
Sharp acts as a street censor blocking
the flow of grassroots information.

We humbly ask the city council and community
of Berkeley to be aware of Jim Sharp's actions

and to come together to stop his obsessive vandalism.
He's a menace to the community fabric.

There certainly have been many conversations about this,
so it's not that nothing,

it's just in Berkeley there is a lot of talk
and not much action on many subjects.

In my conversations with him, he seems to be absolutely
convinced that you know, what he's doing is noble

and you know that we should be praising him
and rewarding him for what he's doing.

If you get rid of this, then it becomes useless,
can't get in touch with them.
Once you get rid of the phone number...

Yeah. I'm not gonna be driving around in
a Joe Connolly van with all the different colors.

But it's like individual letters.
Now you don't know whether it's a dot org or a dot com so.

When I explain to him that what he's doing
is actually ethically an legally very challenged behavior,

you know he doesn't seem to take that seriously.
Well I'm very sorry for your documentary,

if me as just one council member saying that
I'm concerned about it is all you're getting from the city,
that's pretty sad.

Where's it, somewhere around here.
He does all this up here.
Oh, he the Silver Buff.

Just cause it's silver doesn't mean it's mine.
Did either one of you ever take a philosophy course,
any course in philosophy?

Yeah, I did.
Once upon a time, yeah.
Ok, ordinary language analysis,

if you see a herd of sheep and they're sheared,
how would the ordinary language analyst look at that?

They're sheared on this side, they don't know
that they're sheared on the opposite side of the sheep.

So, just because this is silver doesn't mean that I did it.

Is this your valentine? I think you're gonna
be in deep shit. So this guy is gonna block his pole, see.

How Astute.

Yeah, illegal surface.
Ooh, eh, I haven't touched you, I haven't touched your property.

Well, what's your property doing all over the place?
Sayonara.

I'm otherwise known as Bishop Joey in a church
that I created called the first church of the Last Laugh

which has sponsored since 1979 a parade in San Francisco
called the St. Stupid's day parade held every April 1st.

Kept noticing other religious stickers around town
and decided I wanted to get in on that.

I consider it a type of graffiti that's considerate.
I put them on public property or on somebody's advertising.

I am on a mission, I'm trying to subvert the dominant
religious paradigms. I do political satire with the mime troupe

and I do religious satire with St. Stupid. I love looking at
graffiti and I just love seeing the different styles.

I think it's art, it's folk art in the street, it's a shout of
here I am, it's a shout of I exist.

The more important that these kids say something,
have their ability to walk by a wall in an alley and go
"that's my tag."

they feel, there's an empowerment to that.
I've seen grown up, I've done grown up. Fuck that shit.

For Jim, it's he's got a little control. He sees this as noise,
he's against it, he's eradicated it, he's done something.

It's just the opposite of that little kid with the marker going
putting his scrawl up, you know, he sees the noise around him,

he's added his voice to the noise, he's added his sound.
It's nice having an antagonist.

Cause now I'll be looking for him.
And my dream, Jim, my dream is to be following you.

You'll be scraping a sticker and
I'll be right behind you putting up a new one.

Look at all the silver, it looks like shit.
He fucked up the whole neighborhood here.
He needs to be trained, I have to train him.

Mr. Sharp, good morning. Joe Connolly from Los Angeles.
It is a pleasure to meet you.
You should be wearing a slicker.

Do people bug you about the paint? Why silver?
I'm just curious.

These guys bug me. Silver is a very good up.
I don't have truck with a lot of different paints, like apparently you do.

No, I just went out because people started saying
you're an asshole, you don't match the paint.

Yeah I get that.
Jim's gonna maybe eventually figure it out

and he's gonna match all this paint.
Then he's gonna meet these little cocksuckers,

and he's gonna say stop, and they'll stop cause
they have, they need that, they're addicted, they're addicted.

Like the guys with the posters are,
they all have their, cause that's money.

Are you guys addicted though?
I'm addicted, yeah, I'm massively addicted.

Every time they find somebody
who's doing some abatement work...

Community activism.
I know. You make them out to be a fanatic.

Well we, you know we are a little fanatical.
I'm probably as...The reason a lot of guys

leave me alone in LA is because
they know I'm probably more obsessed than they are.

Wow, silver, what's up!? But look at this Jim!
Says Silver Buff over there.
It's a valentine.

Someone's taunting you. It's all talking back
and forth to each other...But Jimbo why not the tape?

Well I'm distracted.
I'm just saying. You leave this,
you left all those stickers on the window,

you left that thing over there,
you left these things over here.
See you gotta know how to rub.

So that's the crazy thing about this, we all get blamed
for graffiti and the consequences are because we just standing here

trying to catch the bus.
So they'll say, "Oh, she's with gangsta pimp click."
You know and boom boom boom, you know, fuck, come on.

What do you think of Joe so far?
He's even more than I imagined.

If you motherfuckers don't leave Jim's area alone,
I'm fucking coming up here and it's gonna be some shit.

Fred Radtke tried to have me cited with 1500 counts
or something of illegally posting on telephone poles.

And it was gonna be like $50,000 in fines. When I first noticed
that my signs were being painted over with the gray paint,

they were street signs. It's like weird, it's helping
get around the city, cause the city didn't have
enough money to put up a street sign.

So I got this really civil rights attorney. It went down to
1 count and a $200 fine with just 6 months of no posting
on telephone poles.

I learned a valuable lesson:
don't sign your artwork with your real name.

People write stuff up on the walls like no more ghostin.
The whole ghostbusters emblem.

You had these "Fred Says" stencils,
you know had art reaction to him.

When Banksy got to town, he was informed about the battle
going on between myself and Mr. Radtke and the writers in town.

Mr. Radtke was responsible for buffing out some
of the pieces that Banksy had put up.

One of the news stations had gotten it
on film and put it on one of their news segments.

The recent works of world-renowned artist Banksy
have taken street art to a new level.
Have you ever covered over any of his stuff?

No.
But has anybody asked you to?
No. I've read it has been covered,

but people know me, if I'm gonna cover up something,
it's not gonna be just a flower or just a little boy,
it's gonna be everything.

I think for Mr. Radtke to say that he hasn't painted
over a Banksy piece, is a bit of an erroneous statement.

So the owners of this wall gave permission to
a bunch of local artists to paint on it.
And originally it was this beautiful thing that said,

"Welcome to the Bywater" and Radtke came by
and started graying over it, completely ruined the piece.

The owners of the wall found out, they had the artists
come back and paint another piece, started to gray over that.

And then decided to take matters into their own hands,
they ended up having to call the military police, who arrested Radtke.

The person that has this mural, it's illegal ok.
No one's said anything about this mural, it's illegal.

The graffiti taggers got permission from the property owner,
that's ok. But the point I'm making

is that the property owner didn't get permission from
the city of New Orleans.
Did you get a court order to not paint on buildings?

I didn't get any court order. I was asked by the court
not to paint on buildings without permission from the property owner.

Did you paint on somebody's building today without permission?

If we did, we weren't aware of it.
Now are you in violation of the court.

You know cause, didn't they tell you to get permission before.
Uh, I don't know,

I mean a lot of what I think the buffers get into is that
they immediately have a label for it that calls it
a bad thing or calls it gang stuff.

One of the things that society needs to learn
is to get past that narrow misconception.

There's more out there than gangbangers just
out fucking up shit. And that's where the perception is.

You've got over a dozen formats of people doing graffiti,
ranging from satanic occult to hip hop gang.

He doesn't know what he's dealing with. I don't think he's ever
really met a graffiti writer. When I was a kid, I'd see it on the walls,

and I'd be like man that's awesome, you know,
you get to draw on the walls.

It's a renaissance era right now with graffiti out here and
just art in general. We're stepping it up, all the other artists
are stepping it up.

We're building. Our city was pretty destroyed,
but we're starting over. Hopefully we can do something

that you can love, some people are gonna hate,
that sucks, oh well.

A lot of these gray buffs are, they hit close to home.

There's no winner because no matter
what at the end of the day shit gets buffed.

You're gonna go over me, I'm just as persistent as you
old man. I'm a little bit younger than you.

I wasn't a marine or nothing and
I'm not the best fighter, but I got heart.

Make sure there's no cops around because this is illegal.
The petroglyphic stupid. I heard you've been following me around

You're this guy? Oh, you got the t-shirt.
While you're doing it though,
have you considered tearing down other stuff.

Well, in front of you, I'm kind of
awed by the whole experience.

Well, take it down.
Well, here's what I'd do ordinarily.
You got a job, Jim. Me too.

Why even bother scraping his sticker off? Now you
know him, now he's your friend why would you do that?

We're not friends.
We're not friends.
I was mister madame mayor for one of them.

I remember that.
Can I put a sticker in your bucket?
Well, I don't collect them. I'll try to keep that forever.

Damn right, good luck. It's nice to meet you Jim.
I'll see you around.
It would be hard to picture Berkeley without graffiti.

In a sense though, Berkeley's graffiti gives you
sort of a reason to be doing what you're doing.

Even though a lot of the graffiti in Berkeley is technically yours.

What are we gonna do. We need our definitions, get those down.
I mean graffiti is any marking that you put up on
a public surface without permission.

Uhh........that's one definition, if you wanna use that one.

Have you ever had the pleasure of breaking a window on...
No, I don't break windows, I'm a window saver.

You've never broken a window on purpose?
No

When I'm asked if graffiti is an attack on society,
I say of course it's an attack on society, but first

you have to define what you mean by society.
If society is a system of private property

ownership and exclusion, if society is a system of
laws that are largely drawn up by real estate investors,

private property owners, a government
who subscribes to a system of capitalism

and colonialism and war, if society is a system
undermining the perspective of young people,

then I'm very much in favor of graffiti not being
part of that society and in fact destroying those
elements of that society.

If you believe in the way things are and that
they should keep continuing as they are, then you would see

graffiti as going against something you believe in.
Whether or not you understand it in those terms,

I see why it would make you angry. I think America is all about
hiding the expenses, just hiding the fact that we're
fucking things up and taxing the world.

When I talk to people about why they don't like graffiti,
usually it just has to do with that they just don't like looking at it,

they think it looks ugly. Well ok, that's ufortunate,
but it's not a serious crime.

You have a giant ship, the USS Los Angeles.
And you have holes in it's hull
and you're a politician and you know you
can't fill all those holes in the hull.

What do you do? You paint the ship and tell everyone
it looks good and it's staying afloat. People believe you.

Why? Because how could a beautiful ship be sinking.
People are so foolish when it comes to appearances,

they really believe that making
things look good makes them work better.

We see great disparities in wealth, reduction in some
pretty essential services including health care, education and

I think there's been overemphasis on
removing graffiti at the expense of other more pressing needs.

When you have laws being broken by the US presidential
administration or you have laws being broken in the form of

stealing money from investors, undermining people's ability
to consume food, housing and education on a level
that's equal with everyone else in society.

The breaking of those laws is so sophisticated
that individuals and small groups feel powerless
in the face of the breaking of those laws.

Do you think the graffiti writers may feel controlled
in their lives and reasserting some control in
a competitive way with the society around them?

I have no idea how graffiti writers feel in their soul of souls.

I think the reason people are so outraged by
the breaking of laws in the case of graffiti is because they feel

empowered enough to be able to intervene
and challenge the breaking of those laws. When those people

really think about graffiti, they have to ask themselves,
why am I so outraged by this,

what really happened here today when that wall was written on?
And that lack of a definite answer

leaves people feeling crazy and
that feeling of craziness makes people very angry.

Graffiti now is really the start of an entire
demise of an area because in with it comes homelessness,

trash, empty storefronts, it's broken windows
but its...broken windows doesn't go far enough

because the people who wrote broken windows
don't know a god damn thing about graffiti.

All the stickers are off the poles, starting to
just take this whole area back from everybody.

Still some bullshit going on, all this, all tagged up.
This was all weeds in here

so we knocked all this down, all this stuff
will be cut back, all this stuff will be cut back,

all these trees will be cleaned up. This just all went up, see.
Somebody's noticing stuff, so we'll knock that down.

Took me 3 days to knock everything down here by myself.
There was 8 people living in here, 8.
I had some signs that said "no trespassing".

They ripped those down.
There's no where for them to stay, if it rains, they get wet.

Hello. Good morning. How's it going sir?
People gotta stay somewhere, but unfortunately now,

this neighborhood wants to take all this area
back plus this is a fire hazard.

If you want to cut every bush down around this motherfucker,
go ahead. I just turned 50 and look here, I don't have problems,

I've been to jail, I've been locked up.
I ain't fucking with nobody, you fucking with me.

But listen, if animals can stay up in here, I can!
If dogs and cats can stay up in here, I can.

OK, hey be careful out there, ok. Good luck moving all your shit.

Losing your house is a bitch. Someone take my house, I'd be
pissed off too.

Yeah, compliance is, I'm a control freak. So, see in a democracy
in my world, it's easy, you don't have to think, just show up,

we'll tell you what to do and that's it. Why?
Because I know what I want is what everybody wants,

their just too afraid to say it, so I'm ok with that.

I'm not a vigilante, the difference is once you drop off
the "e" you become the thing I am and that's vigilant.

And you know I think vigilantes are a little edgy, a little crazy.

Have law enforcement or the city ever hassled you
about painting public or private property, which is technically illegal?

That would be so not in their best interests to bother me.
Have they ever tried to question you?
No, I would have to dismiss them.

Some gang friends of mine, they're like
"Hey Joe, how you doing today?"
They called me because they used to watch my sign.

And they go, "You're not gonna believe this but right now
there's 7 LAPD guys painting your sign out."

So I rolled over on my bike and said
"Sargent, what are you doing ?"

He said "Well, we got this new Captain,
he doesn't like your sign."
I go, "Fuck that son of a bitch.

Here's what we do, drop your motherfucking guns,
I'm citizen's arresting all you cocksuckers right now
and you're all under arrest."

So I went down to the station, jumped over
the fucking counter, I said,
"I want to talk to Captain fucking John Mutz."

So Captain Mutz had a meeting with me and
he said "I found your sign to be disrespectful."

I said, "I find you to be out of your fucking mind.
You're a dumb motherfucker.

Gang members now think I'm a dick because of you.
So now I'm picking the gang members over you.

You know why? Cause there's only 9500 of you assholes
running around, there's a 100,000 of them

and they got all the guns and bullets from the riots.
So if a war breaks out,

you're gone, it's over for you. So I'm warning you,
you can't come back into my neighborhood
until you apologize to me."

Some of the people who watch some this might
just say he's crazy. What would you tell those people?

They're right.
Yeah, they're right. I can't disagree.
There's crazy and then there's gosh,

what's another good descriptive word for him?
He's crazy but not insane.

Could you imagine not being able to buff anymore at a certain age?

When would that happen? I'd go to a retirement home.
Somebody's gonna have to push me around in a wheelchair.

Let's say I'm sitting in a wheelchair, I could come by
here like I'm sitting in here like this in a wheelchair.

I could just be like this. I can still work a knife.
I mean I got two hip replacements.

They said I wouldn't run a marathon again.
I now have more marathon finishes than anybody,
anybody in the history of the city of LA.

Could you handle if you had to stop buffing for some reason?

I don't see that happening.
I deal with a lot of crazy things

and I was able to make sense out of it.
I just go you know get some guys in rehab,

go paint some graffiti, go find a way to get some guys
into art programs. I just keep moving, because if I actually
stop and think about it,

man, I'd be a mess, I'd be a total mess.
I'm on the right track and that's all that matters.

That's all that matters to me.
So, I don't care what people think.
You know, life's too short.

You getting this? Pink!?
Yeah! I'm the pink buff and this is the gold buff.
We're going to be buffing all your buffs.

This is vandalism, pure and simple, what you guys are doing.
What, that's vandalism?

Yeah, does that match anything here?
Ummm
This silver doesn't seem to match blue, Jim,

I don't know, we're just gonna try to call attention to it.
It says clean me up, you know.

This fucking asshole, you paint the container?
Don't paint the container anymore,
don't touch the container anymore.

I haven't touched it. They're touching it.
No more paint.
We're trying to take care of him.

No, no more paint, this is city property, you guys are bad.
It's not us, man.
Who paint the container? He did? He did?

Yes.
I'm gonna call the cops, you're gonna tell the cops that.
It's a pretty good cover up.

These guys are tagging with different colored paints
along here. I can show where the tags are.

Somebody called in about you guys spraying paint on
the trash cans and I'm just trying to figure out
what the deal is.

And they've brought their own paint and
they're following me around and painting surfaces.

Have you not painted any surfaces?
Not today.

You're just calling attention to him doing this over the years by spraypainting yourself.
Unbelievable story. Let me get some names.

There's that. And your ID sir.
I have an expired driver's license.
That's fine. Ok just hold on a second.

But is it graffiti if they're covering up graffiti?
I'll answer for it. You answer for all the ones you've done.

I'll answer for the ones that are on tape that you guys have got.
Both of them.

So you'll lie about the rest. You know you've done every
single one of these things out here. That's amazing.

You don't have cans of paint today, good for you, smooth move.

It was entrapment. Did you know that?

What?
I did this deliberately to get you guys out here.
I believe it.

He didn't actually see anybody spraypainting so I'm just gonna
write it up as a suspicious circumstance, ship it on through.

I'm sure what he's telling me is true but
until we have a prosecutable case...

What about the color of the paint?
Doesn't matter, it's all circumstantial.
So we can expect to maybe hear back about this?

You're not gonna here back about this.
OK, well that's definitive.

I'll pick up a little garbage with you now Jim.
We've been through a lot together.

The Next Day

The City of Berkeley has taken no action against Jim Sharp. He continues to weed, pick up litter, tear down posters, and cover the city in silver and black spray paint.

Fred Radtke maintains his abatement campaign on the streets of New Orleans. He claims to have diversified his techniques beyond gray paint.

Joe Connolly remains a vigilant "community activist." He is currently writing an autobiography and is in talks for a reality TV show.