Carrboro's Mural Scandal

Carrboro, NC is a tiny little town on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, and while I'm technically a resident of Chapel Hill, I find that all my hanging-out time is spent in Carrboro. Carrboro is known for it's live-and-let-live attitude, community spirit, and good karma all around. But this past week we've been embroiled in a mini-drama that shows all the signs of a good soap opera.

The controversy has to do with a mural that was pained on the side of the Jade Palace Chinese restaurant in 2002. The location is in the heart of Carrboro, next to the community center, and across the street from the Weaver Street Market, the local food coop. The original mural was built as a community building exercise and fund raiser for a Club Nova, a halfway house for mentally challenged adults.

Here's a picture of the mural, shortly after it's completion which I took from the carrboro.com web site.

Shortly after the mural was completed, the city alderman deemed the mural in violation of the Town ordinances which prohibited painting business names on walls of buildings. As you can see from this picture, there are several businesses logos and names on the wall. This put the aldermen in a sticky situation because they had routinely cited other businesses for similar violations and so they risked looking like inconsistent enforcers of the law. On the other hand, the mural was wildly popular and had broad community support because, well, it had been intended as a community building project all along.

Eventually, a compromised was reached. Carrboro's "poet laureate" was commissioned to write a poem about the community spirit and it's verses were strategically painted on the mural to cover up the offending logos. So it seemed that everyone was happy.

So last Tuesday, Carrboro citizens were shocked to discover that their beloved mural had been completely painted over in a nice post-office lime green and interestingly enough, no one seems to be able to find the person responsible for it.

This much is known. A man driving a rented Suburu (you can rent a Subarus?) went to the local homeless shelter and hired a bunch of guys for day labor. This is a very common occurrence in the area. The man then proceeded to a local store to buy paint and supplies for the project and then set the homeless men up to paint over the wall.

Francis Chan, owner of the Jade Palace discovered the work crew just as they were finishing up and began asking the work crew who had authorized the covering up of the mural. The man who'd hired them had left to get rid of the supplies. As the story goes, the man had come back to the scene but turned around and left when he saw Mr. Chan talking to the work crew.

The identity of this man, so far, has not been determined. But there is some suspicion and anecdotes to indicate that perhaps it was a certain Mr. Larry Hayes was involved. Mr. Hayes was reported to have borrowed a ladder for the work crew earlier in the day from a local business owner. Mr. Hayes had a confrontation with the city alderman a few year back about a painted sign on a building advertising his Broad Street Cafe. Eventually, after facing fines and citations, he painted over his sign. So perhaps there was motive on Mr Hayes part, but it's unclear what his role was in the recent mural cover up was. Police have not yet been able to identify the driver of the Suburu.

Here's a picture of the wall as it currently is.

This ugly incident raises some interesting variations on the tragedy of the commons problem. It has sparked a fierce debate in Carrboro over who owns the right to decide what should be painted in it's place. Ranging anywhere from embracing the wall as an outlet for graffiti artists to another community based project. No one, it seems, seems to think that Mr. Chan has any say over what gets painted on his restaurant's wall.

And finally, can a blank wall be considered graffiti? Can the absence or removal of something be substituted for the thing itself? If not, how can the perpetrator, once found, be charged?

I tell ya, this is the most exciting scandal to hit Carrboro in years. Stay tuned.......

updated: corrected "buy pain" to "buy paint" :-)