The sprayed-on hate was delivered courtesy of someone claiming to be a Vato Loco (crazy gangster). That’s the moniker of a gang that began in Los Angeles but has it roots where all street gangs are spawned, in feelings of hopelessness, alienation and completely wrong-headed notions of what it means to be macho.

You might say Vato Loco is urban shorthand for “I am a semi-literate, impotent and cowardly youngster who draws his manhood from a can of spray paint, which I must use in the dark of night because I would never have the guts to look anyone in the eye.”

In an era when the parks department has suffered multiple wounds from budget axes, Tuesday morning’s scrawl seemed like another unkind gratuitous attack, but it was business as usual for the graffiti removal team, which began its work on the skateboard park about two months after its Dec. 13, 2008 opening.

Just over a year after it opened, the skateboard park has been an unconditional success, constantly populated until the lights go out at 11 p.m. The skateboard park’s existence flies in the face of budget realities that have forced the parks department to retreat on many fronts.

It was a real community effort, sponsored by the Trails, Open Space and Parks (TOPS) program, the Phil Long Community Fund, the Denver Broncos Charities, the Great Outdoors Colorado and the Skate Friends of Colorado Springs.

The graffiti has done nothing to deter skateboarders.

“They can skate over the paint any day,” joked parks department Director Paul Butcher.

Park workers say the graffiti has been rampant in the last couple of weeks, but the graffiti removal team’s goal is to get rid of the ugliness within 24 hours.

“I’m not sure how often it has occurred,” Butcher said. “Some of it has been gang-related, some of it hasn’t.”

In some ways, skateboard parks present an irresistible canvas. From coast to coast, they are regularly tagged by gangs, but some of the graffiti transcends mere tagging (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and there are skateboard parks where graffiti art is allowed to remain.

“There is a lot of space there,” Butcher acknowledged. “Graffiti has no value if people can’t see it.”

The 40,000-square-foot park may be an appealing target, but at least at Memorial Park, it tends to be erased and forgotten as quickly as yesterday’s newspaper. That punk with the spray paint can is, at best, doing pedestrian performance art, not anything that will last.

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Hear Barry Noreen on KRDO NewsaRadio 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:40 a.m Fridays and read his blog updates atgazettedev.gazette.com/blogs/barrysblog

Philips’ Green Cuisine kitchen boasts an “Interactive Kitchen Table” with a “Dynamic Table Top Interface.” The piecew orks as both a dinner table and a cooking top. There are no preset cooking zones as the in-built sensors together with the graphic interface of concentric rings and scroll-bars account for a multi-sensory experience. Photo by The Associated Press/Philips