This morning the east side of upper Maple Leaf Reservoir Park looks like a crowd of drunken golfers left huge divots in the turf.
Dozens of them.
??
Also, somebody tagged the fence at the north entrance.
March 21
Evil doings at Maple Leaf Reservoir Park
Uncategorized
15 comments
Thank you Everyone! We were completely oblivious of this whole event until today, when we came across this posting in this website. We are thankful to the community here, for the overwhelming response. Special thanks to John Wolff for his magnanimous and selfless act of kindness to take care of this. John, I will call you to thank you in person.
We are truly enjoying this neighborhood, and collectively we can keep this a safe place for all of us!!
The Residents.
Thanks for cleaning this up so quickly John!
I think Tim is on the right track.
I want to think the divets in the grass were the City, removing the weed tufts.
Big gigantic thanks to John Wolff, who cleaned off my neighbor’s fence of the graffiti. John is a hero. Very cool gesture.
This one responded well to Motzenbocker’s, a brass wire brush, elbow grease, and a touch-up with lacquer thinner (only because I ran out of Motzenbocker’s). Practically a no-trace job; I was rather pleased if I do say so myself. For unpainted board fences such as this one, a final touchup with a sander can blend-out the edges. If you get each board uniform, it will slowly weather into indistinguishability.
Doing this surface with organic solvents like lacquer thinner might be a bad idea — it might drive the paint into the porous surface — similarly, if the underlying surface is a low-quality paint, the solvent will start mixing the underlying paint with the vandal’s paint.
For porous surfaces such as rock or masonry, I have heard of but not tried a product called Elephant Snot (really) recommended by a NPS ranger who developed a program for graffiti vandalism — likely the same sort of chemistry but gooey enough to adhere and soak in. Hose-pressure water cleanup, allegedly.
Unless I’m mistaken, the water-based graffiti removers are organic, extracted from citrus rinds. I’m guessing that limonene is a major component — not very toxic to vertebrates. The reformulated lacquer thinners have the toluene/toluol removed; these were by far the most toxic components. This job used no more than 1/2 cup. You apply it sparingly with paper towels. Interestingly, some years back when the Sierra Club asked manufacturers of major cleaning products for the ingredients of their stuff, the makers of Simple Green did not cooperate.
It makes sense to treat all chemicals as toxic, because They will sell us anything they can get away with.
For that much work it’d probably be cheaper and easier just to put new boards in.
I’ve had good luck in the past using Simple Green, a soft scrub brush and elbow grease. It works best when paint hasn’t had time to sun bake to a hard surface.
This family just relocated from the east coast and was so excited to move into their brand new home; a sad welcome to the neighborhood!
I’ll provide the Simple Green if Maple Leafers want to redeem our neighborhood by having a mini work party to scrub the fence! Anybody else want to help? Name a day and time and let’s clean it up!
How about some environmentally-friendly alternatives rather than using harsh chemicals to clean this up? Particularly if the person cleaning this up has to wear protection while innocent pedestrians (and I’m sure there are many given the high traffic of this area) are exposed to said chemicals.
My recommendation is to use oxygen bleach (safe for plants and humans), warm water and a good scrubbing brush. Another alternative is barkeeper’s friend (oxalic acid), also a safer solution that is non-toxic.
I can offer advice and possibly help in removal of the graffiti, but it will have to be today Mon. 3/23/15. Otherwise, next week.
We want to get this done ASAP, else we will get more soon.
The sooner this is done, the better/easier. Get some Motzenbocker’s Lift-Off #4 (for spray paint) at Ace. Wire brush (if you have a good battery drill, I have some new circular wire bruishes). Hose off with water (water inactivates the chemical, so best to use this when it’s dry). Lacquer thinner is also useful, with paper towels, neoprene gloves, and preferably use a respirator with the stuff that contains toluene (newer formulations do not contain toluene, which is neurotoxic).
It is important to do the entire panel and not leave a “ghost”. Eventually, the cedar will weather to gray and nearly match the adjoining panels.
If anybody has better ideas or experience, please advise me.
This spot is an attractive target — I’ve been expecting this — so the community needs to respond quicklly and effectively.
The landowners might wish to engage professionals.
NEVER bring dirty rags with solvents indoors — danger of spontaneous combustion particularly with acetone & disel oil (I’ve seen this happen).
999-4426
Also, the dog poop adjacent the drunk German divits was picked up today. The guilty party has pledged to pick up ten anonymous poops as a sign of good faith.
Yeah, the holes didn’t look to be vandalism. They are uniform and evenly spaced. Maybe drunk German golfers.
The holes were made by park services, digging up weeds. I saw them a few days ago. This is not vandalism…the fence, however, is another matter.
My wife says she saw a group of landscapers digging up weeds in the park on Tuesday– could it be related?
I first noticed the holes Thursday afternoon around 4 PM.
Just FYI, the holes were there yesterday as I walked by @ noon.