I find it interesting where Providence chooses to spend it’s money – or my money as the case may be.   For such a small urban center, this city seems to be plagued with Graffiti.   It’s downtown, in East Providence, the East side, Federal Hill, no one place seems to be without Graffiti.   I compare this to Chicago – one of the top 3 largest cities – that doesn’t have a graffiti problem.   You see Mayor Daley of Chicago has his own graffiti busters team – sure it costs money, but pride always does – that’s why I always ask if Providence has any pride?   OK to be fair, there is a Graffiti team for downtown Providence, that goes around with rags and bottles and cleans up tags.   In fact the mayor has put a bounty on tracking down these “artists”.   However, I think that’s more talk then action.   In reality, they keep downtown Graffiti clean – but how about the other parts of the town?  There is a government number you can call to have it removed -1800-524-4377, in fact impressively enough you can go to the city of providence website and email a graffiti complaint.  However if you’re not downtown, it will probably take 3-4 calls/emails to get anything done and forget about having it fixed during the winter – they claim that the chemicals they use don’t work in the cold?  Strange that Chicago doesn’t have an increase in graffiti in the winter?  In fact, they claim that in order to remove graffiti from stop signs they need to replace the whole sign?   Have they not heard of anti-graffiti coatings?  We ended up taking things into our own hands and using Motsenbocker’s Lift Off #3 – for a lousy $10, you can remove pretty much anything with this stuff – yet Providence doesn’t seem to think this works in the winter?  Ironically enough, the East side which probably supplies the bulk of the tax base and where the Mayor of Providence lives, is probably the worst area for Graffiti – in fact just three blocks from the Mayors house you can find graffiti – perhaps his tinted limo windows prevent him from seeing it?  Come on Providence, Get some Pride!