Call it a sign of the season. City work crews were out Monday taking advantage of the warmer weather, working to remove artwork that just shouldn't be there.
To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.
Then come back here and refresh the page.
There are certain specific, spectacular signs that spring is in the air.
The birds. The melting snow.
And there are other signs, not so obvious, that spring is close.
"As it comes in we take it down, weather permitting," said Karen St. Aubin, operations manager for the City of Rochester.
Signs city work crews know all to well.
"There's certain areas, certain people just keep coming back and tagging the same buildings."
That's where these guys come in.
"The defacer eraser," St. Aubin said.
A city work crew dedicated solely to graffiti removal.
"We keep one crew working all season long. Sometimes two, depending on our artists."
That term depends on whose lens you're looking through.
"I see quite a few," said Joseph Arambarry, Rochester. "Sometimes you've got bad grafitti as well, but it's a way of expressing themselves, how they feel."
The city does allow certain types of graffiti art. It's all over Rochester. Other artists tag anything they can.
"Sometimes it's a competition with each other. Sometimes it's graffiti that has no purpose, just a negative message out there," Arambarry.
"Well, it gets frustrating because they're defacing where we work and live. You don't want to see that every day," said David Santillo, Department of Environmental Services.
Graffiti removal in Rochester is a year-round battle, and for those who work the streets trying to remove it, it is usually a losing battle.
"It is. We stay on it though. We don't have a huge backlog. As the tags come in, we take them down pretty much right away," said St. Aubin.
Good old fashioned paint isn't the only tool.
"This artist has lebeled himself the spaceman. We're finding wallpaper all over that we take down as it goes up."
"What I think about it is, it's an expression of somebody, letting them know, not to be doing amateur graffiti," Arambarry said.
Erasing the defacing, provides a fresh start.
"Worked out pretty decent. Came off all right."
A clean building, for now.
"All we're doing is making a fresh canvas for them."
In a battle that is surely a certain sign of a Rochester spring.
"It's something you can't beat. You can't beat it. It keeps coming back."