Artists and vandals
    People with paint can make a big difference downtown. Most graffiti — simple-minded scrawls defacing countless surfaces throughout the city centre —declares disrespect for property, whether public or private. Each bit adds to an impression that the area has become lawless, derelict and unsafe. Bylaws trying to avoid this by saddling property-owners with the cleanup costs merely victimize them twice.
   But paint used intelligently can also beautify, as in the huge mural behind The Honest Lawer on Queens Avenue or in the instance at left, where it perked up the dull stucco front of this building at Dundas and Richmond. For years now, Londoners have looked up and smiled at the couple and their child leaning out of a trompe l'oeil balcony on some patriotic occasion and waving to folk below. It's no masterpiece, but it's honourable work and the artist, V. Harrison, was proud to sign  it.
   Not so the fool who leaned down from the roof one night and painted "DUBBLE!" above it — and a lucky thing for him. That contemptible vandalism has been there for years too, and one hopes the fool has grown old enough to realize that his folly has made the city's core's just a little bit uglier and thus its economy (and indirectly his own) just a little bit weaker.
    The stucco is badly weathered these days and one hopes Harrison's art will be kept in any eventual restoration. But we'll be glad when we're no longer affronted daily by the eyesore above it.
    As for the one below it, that's an affront of a different order, but not entirely unrelated.