Posted on 09/12/2007 8:13:40 AM PDT by SmithL
The only local monument to a heroic flight attendant from San Francisco killed in the Sept. 11 attacks six years ago is a North Beach mural that vandals have defaced almost beyond recognition.
Betty Ong, 45, who grew up in Chinatown and North Beach, was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane hijacked by the terrorists. Just minutes before the plane smashed into the World Trade Center, she quietly contacted authorities and gave a detailed description of the hijackers.
Ong is one of several Chinatown natives depicted in a 200-foot-long, 7-foot-tall mural dedicated to Chinese contributions to American history. Titled "Gold Mountain," the mural also includes educators and nurses, Edsel Ford Fong, a waiter made famous by the late Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, and Larry Ching, the "Chinese Frank Sinatra," who was a longtime entertainer at Forbidden City.
Painted by artist Ann Sherry in 1994 on the side of an apartment building on Romolo Place, the mural has been damaged by taggers numerous times. Each time, Sherry, the building's owners and community volunteers have stepped up to perform touchups - and twice to restore the mural completely.
A section for Ong was added in 2003, when the mural was restored the second time. Graffiti-resistant varnish was added, too. But almost immediately, the mural was tagged again. Sherry patched up the mural, but since January, taggers have struck several more times. Sherry kept returning to make repairs but recently found the damage to be worse than ever before.
"This time, the taggers used paint (mixed) with epoxy that we can't just wash out or remove. We have to completely redo the mural," Sherry said. "We started fixing it ... but the taggers get angry if you remove their graffiti and they just tried to ruin it."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
San Francisco Values!
SF is such a lovely place...
It is so frustrating, these friggin youth gangs and their graffiti. We have raised a younger generation who don’t give a damn about anything or anybody but themselves, and don’t care who the offend or whose property they deface.
Arguably the most beautiful city in the country...except for the inhabitants.
Taggers should be shot on sight, IMHO. Talk about “dissing” someone, defacing their property ranks right up there.
No-one (except the taggers themselves) wants to look at a bunch of graffiti. It’s the visual equivalent of rap “music.”
“Arguably the most beautiful city in the country...except for the inhabitants.”
Savannah is far more beautiful, including the inhabitants.
The taggers get angry if you touch their graffiti?
We’re supposed to accomodate these blanking taggers?
They are just expressing themselves?
I’m all in favor of self expression but not when you have to vandalize others property to do it.
Yep.
Now ask yourself this: if this were a gay establishment that had been vandalized, what news coverage in S.F., what politician in the local area, what effort by law enforcement would not get mobilized?
Too bad it wasn’t a photo of Pelosi.
We’re supposed to accomodate these blanking taggers?
Wonder how they'd feel when I touch them upside the head with a baseball bat real hard?
I be to differ. WE have left it up to government run schools to raise these Clockwork Orange clones. WE have subsidized single parent families with barely the means to pay for cable TV much less books for the brats. WE have tolerated truancy to a point that it’s not even considered a problem. WE have tolerated drugs in our school yards. I certainly don’t think WE have raised a younger generation. Condemned a younger generation maybe.
OK. I'll argue that!
SF is the only city in the world where I've had to step over dogcrap -and- human vomit on my way to dinner. Even worse than Amsterdam, NYC, Istanbul, Taipei.
If you want to say that the view -of- San Fran, FROM another part of the bay is beautiful, ok, maybe. But up close? Disgusting.
Savannah's violent crime rate is much higher than San Francisco's. And I'm afraid no flat, swampy, humid Southern city can compare in beauty to any Pacific coast city, regardless of the political orientation of the respective inhabitants. ;)
“Tagging” is the intellectual equivalent of a dog pi**ing on a tree!
if you are unlucky enough you may step over a corpse of a homeless person in the early morning before they are discovered and picked up
The difference in income from tourism between SF and Savannah doubtless buttresses your contention mightily.
Uhm, without the inhabitants, which I posited after all, the dogcrap and vomit wouldn’t be there.
Wow. That’s very insightful
Without the massive traffic, the potholes wouldn’t be there.
Without the pedestrians, the sidewalks would be traversable.
Without the inhabitants, the city wouldn’t be there.
SF is a beautiful city only as you get far enough away from it.
San Francisco: home of Nancy Pelosi and Cindy Sheehan :D
Whatever.
I think the pattern would be as follows:
1. A beautiful city is built by people who know what they are doing.
2. The beautiful city attracts liberals.
3. The liberals undo everything done in step 1.
4. Sane people flee the emerging ghetto.
Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree because San Fran has always seemed dirty and corrupt to me.
The FBI disagrees with your assertation too that Savannah has a higher crime rate. According to them the crime rate is identical :)
http://www.bestplaces.net/crime/?city1=50667000&city2=51369000
My suggestion would be night vision goggles and a sniper rifle. But this is San Francisco we’re talking about; it is probably a city official doing the vandalism.
Tagging happens in any metropolitan area, not just in SF. And, in general, taggers have no respect for other peoples property. It demonstrates a moral decline in this country...
Taggers is a euphamism for criminal defacers.
“Taggers should be shot on sight, IMHO. Talk about “dissing” someone, defacing their property ranks right up there.”
Years ago when we were having problems with tagging, a few neighbors and I went to a city council meeting and brought up the growing epidemic of tagging. We suggested patroling and policing ourselves. I had 2 pairs of night vision goggles, and a neighbor had several paint guns, and we’d simply tag them back! And getting hit by a paint gun will hurt! Well, the city council thought it was a bad idea, though we did get increased police patrol in the area, and the tagging did decline.
Exactly what I was thinking about your post.
Reads as though it would have been a great idea, though (’tagging’ the taggers with a paint gun).
I like the paintball idea.
I think they are both very beautiful except in Savannah you won’t need motorized transportation to move up and down the 7 steep hills like SF is built upon while visiting the city.
amen
I'd like to see taggers stripped naked, tied to a post and spray-painted from head to toe. With epoxy paint.
My dad used to say this country would get rid of many of its gang problems if whole neighborhoods just went after these guys with baseball bats in hand.
Tagging does happen everywhere. But from what I understand, CA has the worst in the nation, especially LA.
In Hong Kong they cane vandals. IMHO, if they got really tough and had some really good punishment in place, they could get a handle on it. Maybe a reward for capture with a successful prosecution, and with a minumum of a year in jail. I bet their “unsolvable” problem would be solved.
But SF is a little too warm and fuzzy for such personal responsibility.
Some would say that's an extreme view. Having lived in Philly where the graffiti was on every vertical surface, I'd say you were being generous. They need to be tortured first.
My 3 year old “tagged” my refrigerator with permanent marker and gunk engine cleaner took it off after trying 2 or 3 other things. It stunk up the kitchen so I had to wash off the engine cleaner but it got the permanent marker off like a champ.
A .308 round, fired from the closest rooftop into the ass of the next tagger, should solve the problem for the forseeable future.
Your right about the graffiti in L.A. I took a wrong turn one day and got off on a side street and not only were the buildings and signs “tagged” but the streets and sidewalks were as well!!
PLEASE,Don’t put the words”San Francisco”and”buttress”in the same sentence.
Louisville Slugger, apply directly to the forehead!
I'd like to see taggers stripped naked, tied to a post and spray-painted from head to toe. With epoxy paint.
I personally could do without seeing that. :)
I think that it may be somewhat unfair to dogs to compare them socially to taggers. Dogs are socially adept creatures who know devotion to duty, unconditional loyalty, play, joy, sadness, etc. They can "read" your emotions, and they just want to bring joy to the world. (The dog's I've raised are this way anyway) I'm tempted to put dogs a step above taggers in the social realm.
On the other hand, dogs can be pretty stupid... :)
Taggers’ house/car/possessions should be tagged as a means of punishment.
Not suprising. As there is more distance placed by the years from 9/11, not helped by the “9/11 truthers”, the people who have died on that day will not always be remembered, stuff like this is going to happen.
Shoot them down in the street like the rabid dogs that they are.
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