Vigilance on Seaton Street.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the changing graffiti culture in the city (the gist: post 9/11 security + gentrification= a tough time for taggers). Over the summer, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham kicked off a wall mural program, which would designate graffiti-targeted spaces in the city as places for murals. Over the summer, two murals were completed in Ward 1. Now, the program is going citywide, and the Department of Public Works is soliciting suggestions for good project spaces. Currently, the Murals DC program has a $100,000 budget. Coordinator Hallie Clemm says painting won’t begin until spring at the earliest. Thus far, she’s received two applications. Here’s part of the form.

The Murals DC program will replace illegal graffiti with murals inspired, designed and painted by neighborhood young people. These young artists will develop murals in consultation with professional muralists and with the approval of the business / home owner. The Department of Public Works and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is seeking assistance in identifying spaces that may be eligible for a mural. Criteria for the pilot year of the program include:

* Spaces that are privately owned, where the owner has expressed interest in program;
* Spaces that have chronic graffiti problems;
* Spaces that are highly visible from street

The entire form can be found here.

Thousands who rolled out of bed early Saturday for Hands On DC, the annual cleanup effort to spruce up D.C. schools, found more than enough to do. But my sense is the organizers were hoping to lure volunteers to return next year by keeping them out of the places that need the most work: boys’ bathrooms. I checked them out (when a girl’s got to go….) at both Jefferson Junior High in Southwest and Anacostia Senior High in Southeast. Talk about depressing. In Anacostia, all but one of the faucets weren’t working and two of the toilets were covered in duct-taped garbage bags. In both, janitors sloppily stored cleaning supplies in one of the stalls and those supplies didn’t do a whole lot to mitigate the smell.

But, hey, call me a hypocrite, but I’d rather paint over graffiti in a stairwell than deal with it. The truth is, the teams at Anacostia, which was built in 1935 and looks like it, did seem to make a small difference. They replaced ratty carpet in the library, weeded out an overgrown courtyard and planted professional-looking flower beds around the entrance. They slapped bright red paint on the front doors and an industrial beige (the can said “Swiss Chocolate,” but I have my doubts) in the stairwells. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do with the dark, dank basement cafeteria. Although I didn’t see this there, it did make me appreciate the small-town public school I went to, K-12 in one building, graduating class of 90 kids.

Any volunteers out there? Which school inside DCPS needs the most love? Tell us what you think.

Cleaning my office last week, I found a letter we’d been sent that literally fell through the cracks, sent by John Lockwood of Cathedral Heights in November:

I enclose a photograph of what I believe is the last “Cool Disco Dan” graffito left in Washington, D.C.. They used to be everywhere, each one with the same elaborate decoration. For several years now, there have been no new ones anywhere, and the old ones have gradually been lost, either by being painted over by other graffiti types, or by clean-up campaigns.

A few days ago, however, as I was on the Red Line to Silver Spring, I glimpsed a Cool Disco Dan on a metal railway box. I couldn’t get a long-distance photo, with all the hedges blocking the view. So, I had to settle for a quick shot from the subway train itself.

From a city-wide phenomenon that people would joke about, to a lone outpost, clinging to an obscure box. Such is the brief quality of earthly fame. Sic gloria transit mundi.

Anyone else out there know of any other extant Cool “Disco” Dans out there?