Pop Art Is Dead

The city's Bureau of Code Compliance has forced property owner Jeff Vantosh to paint over a mural for King of Pops, on the grounds that King of Pops, a popsicle-cart business, has no permanent presence on the property.

Here's my constructive advice to the Bureau: we, residents of Atlanta, love to see well-drawn, colorful murals such as this. They add genuine character to our city and brighten our mood just a bit. Blank white walls facing the street are ugly, uninteresting, depressing, and invite gang tags, more of which I would like to see you eradicate rather than selectively enforcing an advertising policy in order to destroy pretty murals. Through actions such as the whitewashing of this mural, you imply that your office exists primarily to sustain its employees, rather than clear surfaces of unwanted (let me emphasize the 'un' in 'unwanted') graffiti and tags, or force slumlords to maintain their properties to the most basic aesthetic standards.

If you miss this mural, make your complaint to Bureau of Code Compliance director Kevin Bean (telephone 404-330-6190), or District 2 Councilman Kwanza Hall.