As the moon is setting and the late night crowd of spray can wielders are slinking their way home, Daniel Faustinos is rising.
He arrives at work at 6 a.m. and takes triage of the City’s streets, checking in with his email, voicemail and sources to see what cropped up overnight: Is there wildstyle graffiti on the side of a business? Gang tags down by the beach? Posters slapped up on electrical boxes?
He creates a checklist, grabs his toolkit—power washer, solvents, graffiti wipes, scraper, paint, roller—and hits the pavement.
He and his work partner Rick are Santa Monica’s graffiti fighting ninjas, officially titled graffiti removal techs, and together they keep the City’s walls, benches, and fences as clean as possible.
They are doing their job best when residents barely notice the need for them, believing Santa Monica to be a place where graffiti isn’t part of the urban culture. This assumption is wrong of course, as the two techs remove around 100 instances of graffiti a week, but the speed and efficacy with which they do so contributes to an air of graffiti invisibility.
Since March 2021, the pair has received 1,334 community calls for service for graffiti removal and responded to each request with no more than a two day turnaround. Residents can report graffiti using the 311 system or the City’s Graffiti Hotline at 310-458-2231.
“We view the city as a reflection of the workers, so we want to keep it clean and give people a nice perception of Santa Monica,” said Faustinos.
Beyond creating a positive perception, the removal of graffiti can also contribute to public safety.
The broken windows theory of policing posits that any visible signs of crime or disorder, such as graffiti or vandalism, creates an environment that encourages crime in the area. While the degree to which this theory should drive policing efforts has been debated over time—with critics arguing that it unfairly criminalizes poor neighborhoods—the concept that the physical appearance of an area impacts the likelihood of crime occurring there remains a policing mainstay.
“Graffiti, in the form of vandalism, is an eye sore and hurts the image of a community or city,” said Santa Monica Police Department Public Information Officer Rudy Flores. “It gives the perception that there are quality of life issues or crime in the area. In some instances it creates a form of fear and therefore can drive away visitors and business.”
Gang tags are one type of graffiti that SMPD keeps a close eye on. According to Flores, it is far less common now than it was in previous years and is typically used to spread intimidation between rival gangs.
“Our Crime Impact Team takes photos (of gang tags) and keeps track for trends or intelligence sharing,” said Flores. “Sometimes it provides us information or a direction to look when it comes to a crime that was committed in that immediate area.”
Flores also said that when one piece of graffiti appears, it encourages others to crop up in the area. This is why the speed of the removal team is essential.
Faustinos has the practice down to a science and can erase a five foot by five foot spray paint tag in just fifteen minutes.
Upon arrival on scene he assesses the surface that has been vandalized and assembles his erasure strategy. While a brick wall or concrete surface is the perfect candidate for his boiling hot power washer, a more modern finish on a wall, such as Venetian plaster, often requires a gentler approach with solvents and graffiti soap.
The graffiti techs are responsible for removing graffiti on all public City property and will also perform removal services on private property at the owner’s request. They will even take paint chips from blighted surfaces to a hardware store, color match them and then repaint people’s walls free of charge.
Faustinos’s job entails waking up at 5 a.m., being on his feet almost all day and not getting home until at least 5 p.m. While the work might seem like an exhausting or thankless task, Faustinos draws great satisfaction from the service he provides.
“I enjoy being outdoors, keeping the city clean, interacting with the public and helping out especially the small business owners that have been through so much with the pandemic,” said Faustinos. “A lot of their windows get tagged, their walls get tagged, so helping them out is gratifying.”’
Graffiti can have a strong impact on local businesses by deterring foot traffic in the area and making storefronts less attractive to customers.
A prime example of this is Lincoln Boulevard, which for decades was a neglected and ugly corridor nicknamed “Stinkin’ Lincoln,” before undergoing an artistic renaissance that helped cleanse the area of graffiti and covered the walls in murals. The man who catalyzed this shift is Evan Meyer and he is convinced that the flourishing of art on Lincoln is directly correlated to the flourishing of restaurants, businesses and personal services on the street.
Meyer is the CEO and Founder of Beautify Earth, an organization that matches business owners, landlords and city governments with muralists that can transform bare walls into pieces of public artwork. Since its founding in 2012, Beautify has completed over 130 murals in Santa Monica with the organization’s original focus being the transformation of Lincoln.
“Before we started, there was not one mural (on Lincoln), the experience was more vagrants, more graffiti and vandalism,” said Meyer. “It just felt unwatched, it felt uncared for and neglected.”
Meyer reported that businesses with Beautify murals on Lincoln have seen graffiti drop by 95 percent. Graffiti taggers will rarely, if ever, spray paint over existing street art.
“In an artistic neighborhood the outcomes are different; you have a more cared for street, more well maintained, people take care of each other, it translates into how people feel in the neighborhood,” said Meyer. “It’s the reverse of broken windows.”
The artwork on Lincoln also has the added benefit of catching people’s eyes and attracting new customers. When the Beautify team conducted an economic impact analysis report, they found that using an average of $100,000 to represent annual revenue of a business on Lincoln, businesses with murals saw an additional $20,000 in revenue compared to the previous year.
Meyer acknowledges that there might be confounding variables in this analysis, but said that his anecdotal conversations with business owners all confirm his conclusion that the murals led to an increase in foot traffic and sales. Following the success on Lincoln, similar efforts have been made on Pico Boulevard and around the City.
The combined efforts of the graffiti tech removal team and the Beautify Earth muralists generate community benefits that residents experience on a daily basis, even if they are not aware of it.
“It increases safety, it increases cleanliness and it’s a more inviting atmosphere for visitors and tourists and residents, and it’s a nicer, safer look for the city,” said Faustinos, describing the outcomes of his work.
“If I had one word of advice to leave to people it’s put art first, not second,” said Meyer. “Think of art as a tool to create an experience, it’s not just art for the sake of art and when you do that it helps everything: well-being, less graffiti, more foot traffic.”
Clara@smdp.com
