Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Columbus Dispatch - Graffiti mars recently repaired Goodale Park fountain




By  Mark Ferenchik  and  Rebecca McKinsey
Tuesday July 17, 2012 3:20 PM

The tagger who hit the Goodale Park fountain Monday night or Tuesday morning was trying to be clever: “Marriage is for people who never forget??” 

First, the fountain resembles a concrete wedding cake. Second, two elephants grace the top. 

It was signed “Scottsdale Yonkler.” 

The graffiti mars some good news for park enthusiasts. The pond finally seems to be holding water after its latest fix, following 10 futile months when nothing seemed to work. The leak had plagued the pond since the Friends of Goodale Park installed the fountain. 

City workers removed the tags today. 

That’s not the only notable city landmark that has been marred recently. 

On July 8, taggers hit the mural of birds in the underpass beneath Indianola Avenue in the Glen Echo ravine area. 

The mural of blue jays, chickadees and cardinals that Short North artist Clint Davidson painstakingly created was, ironically, designed to thwart graffiti. 

“It is definitely disappointing but it’s not totally surprising,” said Tim Lai, a local architect and co-founder of ALTernative, the local nonprofit neighborhood-improvement group that commissioned the mural. 

His group cleaned up the tags two days later. 

ALTernative paid for the repairs. But if this continues, Lai said the group might have to raise more money to keep up with taggers. 

“We do talk about installing some kind of security camera ... to help discourage people,” Lai said. 

In 2007, the city trained two temporary security cameras into the underpass to try to nab taggers in the act. 

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