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You may recall a short while ago, residents of Albury’s Norris Park were treated to an unofficial re-naming of their housing estate courtesy of an anonymous midnight sign-writer, well it seems said sign-writer has struck again, this time re-naming the housing estate in honour of B-movie tough-guy Mr. T.
Among the laughter and merriment prompted by the alteration was one conspicuously dour visage, Albury’s Mayor Stuart baker is less than amused.
This vandalism is senseless — the cost all gets passed on to the ratepayers,” he said.
“Last year, vandalism cost Albury City $278,000″.
“Whether they are witty slogans or not, it’s irrelevant — it’s a cost to the community.”
Mr Baker said the sign had been defaced about 12 times in the past 18 months and cost about $250 a time to repair, creating a total damage bill of $3000 for ratepayers.
As I’ve mentioned before, people vandalise for a variety of reasons, I think it’s nice to see someone spreading mirth rather than malice for an interesting change of pace.
My hope is that someone got some high quality images so this highly amusing chapter in our history will be recorded for posterity.
Assuming the photographs are put on display, say, in the Regional Art Gallery, a $250.00 clean up bill seems like chicken feed for an engaging and dynamic community arts project.
Somehow I think in ten years when we all look back at this and still have a smirk on our collective faces, when local historians record the saga of Norris Park and the B-grade action heroes, it will be a record in the public annals that ours is a community with a sense of humour, not one so up-tight that we can’t have a laugh at ourselves.
With this in mind, I think in the fullness of time, the clean-up bill will seem cheap at twice the price.
The guy’s doing a great job. He’s obviously a professional so they should just let him keep doing it and see what he comes up with next.
It’d probably be worth the conviction and fine in terms of free advertising for him to just own up to it wouldn’t it?