For the past 2-3 months, I’ve been taking morning walks. It started out by just walking around my “block” a whole bunch of times, but I got bored of that after a while and started going on longer walks, way down Soquel, usually clear all the way to Aptos Village and ultimately to Norma Jean’s Coffee, which has become my favorite coffee shop in Aptos.

I walked 3.12 mi with @mapmywalk. Check out my route in Seacliff, CA, United States! http://t.co/FHm6BOXnvr #walk #walking

— sebfrey (@sebfrey) June 27, 2014

The other day, as I was taking my walk, I was horrified to see that some fencing out in front of Mar Vista Elementary had been all tagged up by graffiti “arists.” This is something I find really appalling. I live in the neighborhood, and in addition to this just being ugly, it’s expensive.

Later in the day, I saw on the Aptosia Facebook group that also a wall at the entrance to the Vienna Woods subdivision had been tagged as well. But then, some good people then took it upon themselves to actually go and paint over the graffiti. Just like that. So the next morning, I went and took my walk, and here’s what I saw:

Talk about fast acting! Thanks so much to Denise Elerick and everyone else who works tireless to keep Aptos beautiful. And tireless they need to be, because the very next morning, I saw this:

It’s amazing to me that whoever is doing this has such little consciousness for what an amazing place Aptos is, and how it doesn’t in any way deserve this kind of vandalism. This is a place where little kids walk every day, and where people really care what happens there.

Well, I care about what happens here. I’m going to figure out what kind of paint Denise & Co are using to cover up the graffiti, and then I’m going to stock up. Let’s keep Aptos beautiful!