I love living in a city with a river running through it.
Now I love that the Hillsborough River, once ignored as an industrial afterthought, is now becoming a major point of activity, pride, identity–and aesthetics. I’ve even taken a cameo spin or two around downtown just to take in night-time bridge optics, courtesy of “Agua Luces.”
But there’s also, as we were recently reminded, a price to be paid for progress.
The city will soon be sandblasting graffiti from the high-profile, east bank seawall near Kiley Gardens in downtown, just north of the Kennedy Boulevard bridge. (Other graffitied areas will remain unscrubbed.) It’s in preparation for an (underwater) “Lights on Tampa” art installation that will include motion detectors that will change the color of light as pedestrians pass along the Riverwalk.
It seems totally cool–except that in this case “graffiti” is not the defacing sort. We’re not talking about the calling cards of spray-painting, identity-challenged cretins. We’re not talking “criminal mischief.” We’re talking about college kids from Northern climes down here for winter crew practice who leave behind painted shout-outs to their schools–from Michigan’s Big Blue to the Princeton Tiger.
Yes, they are the product of stealthy brush work, but rowing “graffiti” says something about us–not just the “artists.” It says that a lot of young, urban-oriented, workforce-of-tomorrow, well-educated grads-to-be think we’re the place to be when it’s no fun back home. They enjoyed themselves and some celebrated a tradition with a postcard touch-up while they were here.
And those logos, slogans and inside jokes are, in effect, a form of marketing and self-promotion for Tampa. And a reminder, ironically, of the demographic Mayor Bob Buckhorn wants to attract here.
When your Riverwalk is a hipster study in sophisticated, lighted-image public art, there is a tendency to overlook its more pedestrian aspects. Here’s hoping the remainder of the rowing “graffiti” remains untouched along the seawalls. It’s part of our identity–and a reminder of why a lot of talented people of an impressionable age come here initially.