Tagging Tag Rag Guilty Really Misses the Mark

Two years ago I began a column on Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez, the son of a minister, by posing the question: “Whither goest thou, Gaddi?”

Today, the more pressing question is: “Hast thou gone soft in the noodle, Gaddi?”

The question two years ago related to Vasquez’s thought processes about the direction of his political career. Today, I’m just wondering about Vasquez’s thought processes, period.

Vasquez, normally a sober, non-grandstanding guy, apparently has had it with the graffiti vandals known as taggers. Welcome to the club, Mr. Supervisor--we’re all frustrated by the taggers.

Part of the reason we’re so frustrated is that we can’t ever seem to get our hands on the perpetrators. They spray, and they’re gone. Pfft. The Viet Cong of urban vandalism. You can’t hit a moving target.

Vasquez, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, has decided that if he can’t hit a moving target, he’ll hit a fixed one.

Accordingly, the supervisor set his sights Monday on the Tag Rag clothing company advertisements that adorn about 50 Orange County bus shelters. Vasquez’s rationale is that baggy, youth-oriented apparel displayed in the company’s poster ads promotes the graffiti culture. Why should the county spend more than $1 million a year fighting graffiti while permitting ads that seem to embrace the tagging culture? Vasquez asked.

Who was the wise man who once said that if you ask the wrong question, you’re guaranteed to come up with the wrong answer?

Tag Rag Vice President Orly Dahan sounded Tuesday like a guy wondering what hit him. One day he’s an advertiser in Orange County; the next day he’s on the Ten Most Wanted List.

Dahan said the company has been advertising in Orange County for about four months. He reiterated what he’d said when the press first called Monday: that the “Tag” is a reference to clothing labels and that “Rag” derives from the name for old clothes.

He said his company has grown during the recession, from a work force of four people two years ago to 50 today. Some big fashion magazines have recently called to do favorable articles on the company, and now, “all of a sudden, we’re put in with the taggers.”

Is this a great country or what?

“They’re trying to blame one thing for the whole problem they have, and that’s really unfair,” Dahan said over the phone. “Am I being told that four months ago they had no graffiti problem and all of a sudden it started because Tag Rag started to advertise? Am I responsible for other graffiti (around Orange County), too?”

Dahan said he saw graffiti on a billboard encouraging people to eat eggs. “Is an egg also part of the graffiti problem?” he asked.

“What they’re trying to refer to is exactly what they did in the ‘60s to people wearing bell-bottoms. All of a sudden that was controversial. There was the statement that if you dressed in a certain way, you were anti-Vietnam automatically. I wore bell-bottoms. Did it make me anti-Vietnam? Did it make me a hippie? Did it make me a drug addict? Is everything interconnected like that?”

On a personal note, Dahan said, he’s offended by being linked to street crime because his cousin was killed on the street two years ago by someone who stole his watch. “He was shot to death. They stole his watch. Do you think this is something I identify with or try to make money out of--violence? I’m the farthest thing away from something like that.”

I think I know what Vasquez is thinking. I’m sure it’s not sinister. It’s just that as a former cop and your basic solid citizen, Vasquez hates the thought of those arrogant taggers defacing the landscape and avoiding capture.

You can almost hear him crying out, “Can’t we can do something?”

Who’s to say? If you can’t catch the actual vandals, maybe the next best thing is a clothing company.

Vasquez and other county officials unveiled a larger plan Tuesday, one that goes beyond bus-shelter posters.

We all wish them well in their quest to thwart the taggers.

Unfortunately, in the meantime Vasquez is sounding like the U.S. military men who, during the Vietnam War, were asked why they leveled the village.

“We had to destroy it to save it,” they said.

To the officials of Tag Rag and any other citizens who may get in the way, beware:

Gaddi Vasquez, who hates the smell of spray paint in the morning, is a man on a mission.