Kelsey Laverack: Subway store in Oakland keeps getting targeted with Graffiti like ‘Fuck Yo Turkey Sub’

‘F—k yo turkey sub’: Subway store in Oakland keeps getting targeted with graffiti

It’s been a tough few weeks for the Oakland Subway store at 6341 Shattuck Ave., which has been the target of ongoing vandalism.

Manager Peter Singh said that the store has dealt with back-to-back graffiti since last month. He said he’s felt demoralized after the vandalism began to ramp up more recently.

“We are really tired of this,” Singh told SFGATE. “It’s just a bad start to the day when you see graffiti all over and you paint it and see it again. It’s painful.”

On Friday, neighboring business Nick’s Pizza posted a photo on its Instagram stories with the most recent vandalism to the Subway location, which is just across the street. In the post, Nick Yapor-Cox, owner of Nick’s Pizza, shared his disappointment after witnessing countless graffiti incidents on his neighbor’s storefront and included a photo of the defaced building that read, “F—k yo turkey sub.”

“It kept coming back and it feels like harassment,” Yapor-Cox told SFGATE. “I think someone thinks that they’re being funny. To me it’s not acknowledging that there’s a person behind there, not a nameless corporation.”

Yapor-Cox added that he’s seen tagging on Subway at least five times within the past few weeks and that while he’s observed tagging on buildings throughout the city, he hasn’t seen other businesses in the neighborhood that have been targeted in the same way.

Singh told SFGATE that each time the business has new graffiti, it’s usually on the side of the building that faces Alcatraz Avenue. He said that it’s cost them about $100 each time to paint over.

As KQED reported in 2015, it is the responsibility of the property owner to remove graffiti on their own. According to Oakland Municipal Code 8.10.200, property owners have 10 days to remove graffiti from buildings and if they fail to do so, they will be fined $150.

Oakland has a graffiti abatement program that helps handle vandalism made to public properties and it states on its website that it offers a one-time courtesy graffiti removal for private properties, but the city encourages business owners to file a nonemergency police report with the Oakland Police Department or report the issue on OAK311.

Since the start of 2022, there has been more than 200 graffiti complaints made to OAK311, according to Oakland’s Open Data. During 2021, there were more than 2,700 complaints made to the service request site.

Meanwhile,

Look, Ukraine is Peaceful right now…