UKRAINIAN VILLAGE — A graffiti tagger was seen on surveillance video as he defaced a storefront along Chicago Avenue in Ukrainian Village early Thursday.
The tagger's 10 seconds of paint spraying is captured in a minute-long video that shows the man walking from the north side of Chicago Avenue to the south side of the street to spray along a furniture store's exterior wall before tucking the can into his bag.
"It's a hassle, makes it look like a gang-ridden area. It's also frustrating and expensive to clean," said Larry Papciak, the owner of Columbia Furniture, a third-generation family store established in 1920.
Papciak's furniture shop wall at 2125 W. Chicago Ave was defaced with black tags, appearing to spell the work "Moonk" after the incident, which occurred at 3:51 a.m. Thursday.
After sharing the video on the Ukrainian Village Facebook Watch page, another resident said he had seen several of the same tags, all fresh, early Thursday along buildings and fences on Chicago Avenue between Leavitt and Noble Streets.
The light-skinned, heavy-set man was wearing brown shorts, a black T-shirt and ball cap and has a mustache and a goatee.
Papciak said he plans to file a police report as well as call the city's graffiti blasters to clean up the defacement on the store's white stone facade.
"So that's tax dollars [being used to clean it up]," Papciak said.
Unfortunately the store, as well as many others in the area, have been defaced in recent months. Papciak said he captured another tagger on video spraying tags on his shop's truck. The person later turned out to be the same man that was chased down by a business owner after vandalizing a nearby restaurant.
Graffiti tag on wall of Columbia Furniture. [Provided]
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