Buffers battle taggers in real-life Etch-A-Sketch

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- This is the story of Buff and Buffy who may or may not be the Etch-A-Sketch for crews of taggers looking for a concrete video game palette in a weak spot.

Translation: This is the story of Portland citizens who take it upon themselves to clean up and remove graffiti because they can't stand seeing it in their own neighborhoods.

While it's true there is a multi-million dollar clean up of graffiti on I-84 and I-5, these covert cleaners use the free graffiti removal kits provided to people who want to remove graffiti on their property or public spaces around the city by the Graffiti Abatement Program.

The kits include tools to remove graffiti on metal and glass surfaces, plus vouchers for free Metro paint.

Buff Rogers

"So what's art and what's vandalism? That was part of the reputation that we're a lawless city," the man who calls himself Buff Rogers said. The graffiti, he said, "just became overwhelming. You're just like, I don't want to live like this."

The Buff Rogers persona "just sort of represents everybody in Portland. It's doing their part and keeping the city beautiful." He was inspired to become a buffer -- "the word that the graffiti community uses to call the guy or gal that takes down their artwork off of a building" -- during the pandemic.

"You're trying to understand what you could do to help. Young kids are bored, they're not going to school. And they just would hit the streets 20 at a time and just scribble all over anything and everything that looked like it needed to be scribbled on. And it just became overwhelming," Rogers said. "It's just all of us can get up, roll up your sleeves, get a paintbrush, and just take it down."

For the past four years, his morning ritual is to "document everything that's on the wall to put it in the files so that if there is an arrest that we can attach these tags to the same vandal and then they can up their bill that they owe the city," he said.

And on site, his routine is precise.

"It takes about 90 seconds to flip out the colors. So again, speed is everything out on the street. You want to get it in and out,' he said. "Done with it as fast as you can."

In the shadows of the night, no one is around to ask questions, so he can cover up an entire wall of graffiti within minutes. He bought an old van that he turned into the "Buff-mobile" to transport all his paint gear on his 2-mile by 2-mile route.

The "gray area" of buffing, as he calls it, is that he doesn't ask permission from the property owners to remove the graffiti. But he sees it as a favor.

"Let's be honest, in my neighborhood, if neighbors go on vacation, you just mow their lawn. It's like just what you do as a neighbor, you take care of it," he said. "I think the same goes here."

The graffiti taggers subculture values anonymity, though their notoriety comes through tags and murals. Buffers, on the other hand, are often seen as protectors of order, cleanliness and property rights, aiming to maintain a city's appearance by erasing vandalism.

That creates a cycle of tension between graffiti writers and buffers and sometimes causes confrontations.

"Yeah, it happens. It's like they feel entitled and that you buffing their piece is an infraction upon their persona. You've personally dissed them," Rogers said. "I'd also say that there is sort of this cat-and-mouse game between buffers and taggers."

Honestly, often his work is in vain, merely an Etch-a-Sketch providing a clean slate for the next tagger. But that doesn't stop Buff Rogers.

"It's had its moments and challenges. There's definitely times in where you get kids running down the street and just hitting everything and you're just going, 'What am I doing? I’m one person, I can't do this by myself. It's too much.' And even at that time, there just wasn't the community that we have today where there's hundreds of people that I can network with that are doing similar work throughout the city."

While Buff Rogers works alone, we found other buffers who work in teams.

Untag Portland

Untag Portland is a group of buffers who have figured out how to get some of the harder-to-reach places on public property.

In the last few years, cleaning graffiti has become Julie Leet's hobby. Some people now call her Buffy.

She is one of dozens of volunteers every week who clean graffiti on the west side of Portland. As soon as a member sees a new tag, they coordinate to take it down legally.

"It felt a lot better taking care of the problem myself rather than just looking at it every day," Buffy said. "When we identify a place, we're using safety vests, we're doing it fully lighted, we are doing it in teams, we are doing it in safe areas. We would report unsafe situations that we couldn't get to the city."

They also partner with businesses who need the help.

"I have a lot of empathy for business owners. So we do whatever we can with authority, with their approval and insurance to go on their property and remove it," she told KOIN 6 News. "I think that local community involvement is always important. It's important for community members to feel connected and empowered to support their area, so it's certainly part of the answer."

Her fellow buffers, like Patrick Brunett, agree.

"Obviously, none of us are getting paid . We just want our city to be as beautiful as it can be," Brunett said. "There's no way to take care of this problem without volunteers seeing where some work is needed and then getting out there and doing it."

The biggest pain point in Portland is vacant properties, like the old concrete factory along the Springwater Corridor.

"It's very 'Grand Theft Auto,'" Buff Rogers said. "It a video game in a lot of ways that they can just come in, all the structures are there and what they're looking for is weakness."

In order to turn the trajectory, buffers believe it will require building owners to take responsibility, citizens to volunteer, and parents to engage with their kids.

The easiest thing any citizen can do is take a photo and report graffiti to the city online.

"As a society, how do we help young parents do better, be engaged, be there to help nurture their kids, to be healthy little citizens that are contributing as opposed to distracting from the community?" Buff Rogers asked.

Until that time, he and the other buffers have their work cut out for them.