Graffiti

Ideas on what to do to attract more people that wish to live in Bruderheim

By Walter Schneider

Graffiti

Early in 2004, just before we moved into Town, a consulting firm had been hired by the Town of Bruderheim.  The consultants collected inputs from the public and provided some suggestions on what can be done to make Bruderheim a vibrant and growing community. 

The representatives of the consulting firm said that one of the immediate impressions they gained when they came to look Bruderheim over was that of there being wide-open spaces, and that Bruderheim was blessed by being so closely connected with the rural area surrounding it, with all of that providing nice and appealing views and favourable impressions.

There were suggestions that Bruderheim could be beautified, that some beautification projects require little, if any, money, and that with very little effort Bruderheim could be an attraction for seniors and retirees intent on finding an appealing place in which to spend their golden years.  Of course, Bruderheim cannot truly be a vibrant and vitalized community without having a reasonably large number of younger families — ideally with children — to count amongst its inhabitants.

To attract more families — families with children or planning to have children — to come to Bruderheim and settle here, a little extra is required.  As good as Bruderheim looks, it must and can be made to look better. 

Maybe that is what Bruderheim is doing, but one has to wonder. 

A couple or three years ago or so, the Bruderheim Youth Club invited the youngsters in town to engage in a graffiti-painting party.  That is really odd.  If ever, graffiti never was much of a problem in town.  Given that graffiti removal is a growth industry that provides a rapidly growing multi-million-dollar annual income for one contractor operating in Vancouver and other locations in Canada and the USA, we should count our blessings and be thankful that we don't have to spend any efforts removing it.  What shall any sane individual then think of a deliberate effort to paint a publicly-owned building with graffiti? 
   If we wanted to engage our youngster and keep them busy, would it not be better to have them give the building in which they hold their meetings and activities a good paint job, a real one, including the painting of the eaves that themselves are in sore need of a paint job while they protect that graffiti that is displayed under them from the weather?  By the way, to have peeling paint on any building in town is a by-law violation, but to have a building covered with graffiti is perfectly all right?

The welcome sign displayed on these web pages for Bruderheim is from the graffiti-covered south wall on the old Bruderheim Curling Rink that presently houses the Bruderheim Youth Club.  Here is that wall in its full splendour.  Bruderheim has a better welcome sign.

Graffiti where few people want it and no paint where it is urgently needed!  What happened?  Less than a gallon of paint would have served nicely to paint all of the woodwork on the old curling rink.  Paint in the right places would have made that building look good and protected it, made it last instead of making it look like an abandoned dilapidated shell in an inner-city slum.  Is that what the Town Office has in mind for attracting new residents in Bruderheim?

Let's take a closer look at that graffiti.  Maybe it has some indiscernible qualities that make Bruderheim more attractive.  At first glance it does little more than make one wonder why paint was wasted on graffiti when the eaves above it needed it so badly.  Nevertheless, the Town appears to do its best to make things look better by growing a good crop of dandelions in the strip of grass between the building and the side walk.  By the way, as you will be able to see in quite a few of the photos showing publicly-owned properties in these pages, the Town is rather fond of dandelions

The writing in that piece of graffiti is difficult to read, but it is important to determine the message it provides.  I guess that the message is the best possible one we can impart on our youngsters.  Too bad that the kid that wrote that piece of wisdom didn't have the required smarts to use proper punctuation and spelling.  The kid most certainly is innocent and perhaps can't be blamed for not knowing there is such a thing as possessive apostrophes.  That is bad advertising for the Bruderheim School and not likely to impress parents whom we wish to entice to move their families into the town of Bruderheim.  Aside from that, does this prime example of the dumbing-down of our kids make the teachers at the Bruderheim School cringe every time they read that bad piece of the abuse of our language?

Furthermore, if one reads the whole message of the welcome sign on the wall of the curling rink, it reads: "Welcome to Bruderheim   Queen of Mean   Twisted   Crazy ".  What does that mean, and how or why will it attract new residents to Bruderheim?  Does all of it beautify our town?

What message does that graffiti give to the children walking past it on the way to the Bruderheim Bigway Store or to and from school?  Children read, and in the photo the smaller of the two girls walking by the graffiti in the photo is reading what the graffiti states.  All of the children that walk by that graffiti read its message.  What is that message, that ugly is beautiful?  What will the children read into "Queen of Mean" and into the fact that the Town of Bruderheim appears to have little regard for what is truly beautiful and apparently regard only for offending people in this case?

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Posted 2006 05 21
Updates:
2006 10 29 (reformated)