Mayor Michelle Wu threw on a protective suit and blasted away at some East Boston graffiti, using the photo op as a chance to make a further push for applicants for city jobs and to tout the recent anti-vandalism work by city crews.
“This is what goes into keeping our city as beautiful as we know it,” a cheerful Wu told reporters after ditching the suit and leaving the work to the professionals.
Wu and City Councilor Gigi Coletta first rolled some paint-removal chemicals onto the graffiti on the side of an abandoned warehouse in Eastie, and then, under the watchful eye of city workers whose job it normally is to do these things, hit it with a power washer, getting rid of much of the paint.
As Wu and other officials spoke to reporters, the city workers kept at it, rolling the chemicals onto a block’s worth of graffiti on the long brick wall and letting it soak in before another eventual hose-down.
City officials said the graffiti crew has scrubbed off 400 instances of graffiti vandalism in the past couple of months in East Boston alone.
The officials said the city’s looking to hire for a range of positions, including the graffiti-removal team — and actual graffiti artists to ply their craft in city-sanctioned sports rather than on the side of other people’s property. Wu encouraged anyone looking for a job to seek out the city website or job fairs, as Boston’s had a hard time hiring of late.
“What we want to do in the city of Boston is to find ways that we can support arts and culture support creative energy, and do so in a way that is beautifying our city we respect and have been celebrating,” Wu said.
Read More: Michelle Wu scrubs graffiti, touts open city jobs in Boston