There’s a rock in Memorial Park that spins.
Not metaphorically. Rockspinner 6 — an 11-foot-tall, 9,000-pound slab of granite from Stone Mountain, Georgia — is mounted on a bearing-filled base and will actually rotate if you push it. It took three people and a crane to place it on the Promenade at Memorial Park. Sculptor Zachary Coffin has shown versions of it at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and Maker Faire San Francisco. Ours is the one that ended up in downtown Rapid City, and I think thats straight up awesome and a flex for the city.
So when I spotted graffiti on it yesterday, I filed a report through the city’s new graffiti reporting form at forms.rcgov.org/graffiti. The form is part of a new city initiative launched this spring, with a goal of removing reported graffiti within 24 hours. As it turns out, they mean it.
By the time I walked back through Memorial Park today, it was gone.
I ran into a parks/ public works crew member most likely responsible for the cleanup. He told me they like to get to it immediately — because fast removal sends a message. The graffiti is gone before anyone has a chance to decide it belongs there.
I thanked him and I genuinely meant it.
Rapid City’s got a lot of complicated things going on. But today, at least, Rockspinner 6 spins clean.
To report graffiti in Rapid City, visit forms.rcgov.org/graffiti.
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