Let's turn to the News From All Over The World: The deputy mayor of the capital of Finland is in a legal jam. People want him to pay compensation for damages and to quit his deputy mayorship, because he was caught spray-painting graffiti in a railway tunnel.
The guy's name is Paavo Arhinmäki, he is one of four deputy mayors in Helsinki, and the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency says it's going to cost them 3,500 Euros ($3,830 American) to sandblast the graffiti.
It's not like he's 13, the average age of someone with a can of spray paint in their hand. This dude is 46 and holds a responsible position, and now it seems he is responsible for the damage to a rail tunnel.
Finnish art experts appraised his work and say it looks like he was inspired by New York City sprayed damage from the 70s.
And this being 2023, Arhinmäki couldn't wait to get on Facebook to talk his way out of it, or try to. He admits to being a graffitier in his younger days and supporting "street art," that field of endeavor in which the artist confuses public property for his own canvas.
Oh, and he apologized for his "stupid fooling around."
Finland’s largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, showed off the deputy mayor's handiwork in a tweet.
This is in a tunnel used by cargo trains, so it's not like he chose a "canvas" where his genius would be shared with many people, just a conductor and a hobo or two.
“I have committed a crime and bear full responsibility for it,” Arhinmäki said, but he also said he refuses to quit.
Every year, Helsinki spends almost 3/4 of a million dollars to remove illegal graffiti in that city of 650,000 residents, whose lives are not measurably improved by having a politician spraypaint all over the place.
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