In August 2006, NABB streamlined its crusade by forming the Graffiti NABBers, a subgroup of activists who dedicate several hours every week to documenting tags and scrubbing paint from Back Bay walls, mailboxes, and windows. Picked to lead the assault was long-time NABB devotee Anne Swanson, who describes herself as “the person who could not stand the chronic vandalism anymore.”
“I would have gladly forfeited the role,” says Swanson. “But somebody had to do something. So many people avoid these commercial alleyways that they didn’t [even] know we had a graffiti problem, but we had more than 10,000 tags up that we’ve now removed. People were comparing it to the South Bronx, and while I’ve never been there, I know what they mean.”
Swanson has become an increasingly notorious figure in graf circles since she jumped in the middle of the turf war between SPEK’s ITD crew and UTAH’s globe-trotting Dirty 30 that went down in and around the Back Bay this past year. In sporadic weeklong benders, members of the two major posses bombarded the area’s 42 alleyways and other targets nightly, crossing off each others’ work and throwing up fresh pieces. Taggers dismiss Swanson, a 60-something Houghton Mifflin editor, and other retaliatory building owners as shallow materialists, claiming that graffiti is a strike against the sociopolitical establishment.
“I’m a socialist,” says one. “I’m against ownership of property, and I feel graffiti is an attack on the capitalist dictatorship that we live in. These people are all about money, and if you damage their pocket, they get really mad, because that’s all that matters to them.”
Swanson might not instill the sort of fear in taggers that O’Loughlin does, but she is largely to blame for their recent woes. Since establishing NABBers two years ago, Swanson’s snapped more than 1500 photographs of what she calls “this ugly stuff,” collected about 50 written statements condemning graffiti, and gathered permission from more than 300 residents and proprietors who authorized Graffiti Busters to remove paint upon recognition. Prior to the program, NABB reports that some businesses along Newbury Street spent more than $75,000 cleaning graffiti.
To compound troubles for offenders, Swanson arranges for neighborhood residents to appear in court so that judges and prosecutors are less quick to dismiss charges. “We go to defend our community and to show that we’re all victimized by this,” says Swanson. “This kind of vandalism is unacceptable in any community, but especially on the historic buildings around here.” Adds Kelley about the NABBers in particular: “I used to hear judges say that they won’t put kids in jail for tagging. That changed when the community started showing up in court and saying they were victims.”
Next up for Swanson and her NABBers: the January 6 Boston Municipal Court appearance of UTAH, whose parents recently paid $8000 in restitution to Brighton, and who is currently out on $10,000 cash bail for bombing Back Bay, where she and various accomplices allegedly painted hundreds of pieces between 2006 and 2007. UTAH — who is, ironically, the 26-year-old daughter of a retired New York Police Department officer — has been a major nuisance in Boston and several other cities for at least five years. “Nobody has the right to trash our community for the purpose of art or entertainment, if that’s what they call it,” says Swanson, who has a degree in fine arts. “Anyone who equates a scribble on a mailbox with Starry Night needs a good course in art appreciation.”
