Taggers in Ocean Beach hoping to admire their work the next day might soon be out of luck. A group of OB citizens tired of the defacement held a paint-out party June 20, painting over graffiti on a stretch of Sunset Cliffs from Orchard Street to the pier – and they plan to keep the cliffs and their neighborhoods tag-free. “We’re going to be right on top of you [taggers] painting it out,” said Jon Carr, an organizer of the paint-out. “From what I hear, spraypaint is expensive and our paint is donated. We’ve got a lot more of it and a lot more people that are willing to go down and help, so don’t waste your time.” Carr, a banker who has lived in OB for the last decade, said about 20 people turned out to paint the walls below the cliffs and remove about 75 pounds of trash in a span of about three and a half hours. “We were able to put it together in five days and get a really good turnout and get it done,” Carr said. The idea for the paint-out surfaced from a OB Rag blog posting by Frank Gormlie on June 12 entitled “The Ugly Side of OB” that featured seven photos of tagged areas near the cliffs. Carr said the subsequent online discussion of the article inspired him to take action. “Somebody posted a bunch of pictures of the wall down there and the bloggers started talking about it and saying it was awful,” Carr said. “I just decided rather than type about it all day, let’s go down and do something about it.” Carr also said the pictures themselves were upsetting enough. “Seeing it down at Sunset Cliffs is particularly disturbing because it’s such a beautiful area of San Diego and something that really helps to define Ocean Beach,” Carr said. “To have it vandalized and really overrun with graffiti is not representative of the majority of people that live here.” Carr began brainstorming with Ed Baier, a local photojournalist, to plan the event. Baier, who has lived in OB since high school, first started painting out graffiti in the 1980s and starting doing it on his own again about a month ago. “Anybody can paint out graffiti at any time, as long as you’re responsible,” Baier said. The city’s Park and Recreation Department donated the paint for the recent paint-out. This was important, Carr said, because one of the most important goals of the paint-out was to keep the wall all one color. “Aesthetics are important and you don’t want to take something awful and make it a different type of awful,” Carr said. “We want it to look nice down there.” During the paint-out, Carr said the support of people passing by showed the importance of the issue in the community. “We got so much support and congratulations from neighbors and people that were walking by the cliffs that day,” Carr said. “Some even stopped and grabbed a paintbrush to help out. It was really clear that was important and something that the community as a whole wanted and was happy to have us do.” Future paint-outs are in the works and Carr said conversations toward that end have just started. For more information about future events, Carr and Baier can be contacted through www.obrag.org. “We’d like to get everybody involved on their own streets and either have some graffiti removal on hand — if you see it, go paint it out,” Carr said. In the meantime, Baier encouraged fellow Obecians to grab some paint and paint out graffiti wherever they see it. “The more eyes you have out there the better,” Baier said. “If you see it, put some gloves on and take care of it.” Baier said the recent collaborative efforts in the cliffs area have frustrated the taggers. On Monday, June 29, Baier said he painted out a fresh tag at 7 a.m. and by noon about 35 yards of the wall had been destroyed by vandals, causing parts of it to crumble. “The [taggers] have been getting so angry because the tags have been up for now less than three hours [before being painted over],” Baier said. “In my experience dealing with these guys, this is basically a typical reaction to frustration – they’ll start destroying the things they were tagging before. It’s just another step in the evolution.” Tagging can be reported to [email protected] and to the city’s main graffiti hotline at (619) 525-8522 for statistical purposes.