pothole.JPG

How do you get a pothole fixed? Wanksy says he knows the answer.

(The Associated Press)

The Portland City Council is still trying to figure out how to fix the city's streets. They've floated and debated plans, and now they're waiting on the state legislature to take a shot at it. It seems clear something's going to happen.

In Ramsbottom, an English town that's part of greater Manchester, the local politicians are apparently not paying as much attention to the problem of potholes. So an anonymous crusader there has taken action. Every time he comes upon a pothole -- and he's come across a lot of them -- he uses "non-permanent" paint to draw a big white penis around it. The idea: this will force the town to fix the pothole and obliterate the drawing.

"The roads of Manchester are in an appalling state, especially around Bury. I have cyclist friends who have been hospitalized," the mystery activist told local media. "They damage vehicles. Sometimes it's hard to know which pothole caused the damage because there are so many. When I've finished in Ramsbottom, I'll move on to the rest of Manchester." You can follow the link to the Manchester Evening News if you want to check out the man's artistic skill.

The penis-painter says many potholes that have been in the road for months were fixed by the city just hours after he painted around them. He goes by the nom de plume Wanksy, a nod to well-known street artist Banksy.

"I wanted to attract attention to the pothole and make it memorable," Wanksy said. "Nothing seemed to do this better than a giant comedy phallus. It's also speedy: I don't want to be in the road for a long time. It seems to have become my signature. I just want to make people smile and draw attention to the problem."

Let's hope it doesn't come to this in Portland. A city spokesman in Manchester insists that in fact Wanksy's campaign only exacerbates the street-maintenance problem. "Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti," the spokesman said, "is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes."

-- Douglas Perry