Bonsai Beach Reunion: following up on last year's graffiti cleanup

I went out to Bonsai Beach on May 18th, 2014 to finish the graffiti restoration and beach cleanup job we started at our Bonsai Rock Graffiti Cleanup last November and check up on the progress of the site over the winter.    So Much of the time here in Lake Tahoe when I cover things here on my channel about the environment, you guys never find out how it was resolved or whether it was even resolved at all.  Also,  I'm going to be catching up with some of the people from the original Bonsai Beach graffiti restoration.

Dylan Eichenberg, event organizer:

Hey you guys, I'm +Dylan Eichenberg  and I helped coordinate the first graffiti cleanup last November and since then it's been a lot of progress.  The +Tahoe Regional Planning Agency  actually recognized me with a Lake Spirit Award  and, I mean, I think it recognized everyone who was part of this for helping keep Lake Tahoe clean and beautiful, improving the quality of what we already have.

Also, my good friend Sam Rossi and I, we wrote a grant for Boreal's #ProtectYourPlayground grant program, thanks to Sam who discovered it, and we actually wound up recieving over $1000 that we're going to put towards graffiti supplies to clean up the rest of this beach.  We're out here today scoping out how things look and it looks a whole lot better than it did last time out here in November and we think that over the winter the graffiti deteriorated a lot more.  So we're working on catching where the new graffiti is if there's any or what spots we still need to hit up.  

See the full Bonsai Beach cleanup gallery on Google+ 

We're going to be back here in October.  I want to get a huge group of people. I know we're going to have media attention and we're going to have a lot of organizations involved in this process.  So, by October, I hope to see everybody out here.  You know, our goal is to leave this beach immaculate.  There have been over 50 graffiti tags but our goal is to annihilate all of it, and with this grant that really made that possible for us.  We're going to be able to buy more graffiti cleanup supplies than I ever thought possible.  So, I want to send a thank-you to Boreal ski resort  who sponsored us for this.  It's been a real good ride, there's a lot of people involved and I'm hoping to keep on growing that effort.

Cody Liberman of People-of-Tahoe:

My name is Cody Liberman and I'm with People of Tahoe, and we're here at Bonsai Beach doing a little catch-up on what we've done in the last 6 months.  Man, it's great to come out here and see all the familiar faces and see all of the hard work that we've done.  Things are just working out great, you know.  A lot of stuff that was here beforehand is now gone.  The trash is just down to its minimum.  Spirits are so high and the morale is just, you know, everyone is happy to see that we've been doing something productive and it's coming along.

Much of last year's worst graffiti has been entirely eliminated.

Like I said before, it's been, probably, about six months since we've been here and we've been reaching out everywhere else we can and trying to help the lake out any way we can with the pipelines and the environmental studies.  Anything we can.  You know, we're a local clothing company and we've been trying to reach out and be as local as we can.  Anybody who has any suggestions or knows anywhere that needs help -- we're there, any time at any point if you just let us know.  Man, it's great to be back and thanks to everyone who did come out.

Martin Gollery, Photographer: 

High Morale: Dylan Eichenberg plays ukulele while Martin Gollery sings along.

Hi, I'm +Martin Gollery,  and I was one of the original people to work here at Bonsai Rock.  In the meantime, I have published a number of photos in Tahoe Quarterly about the fall cleanup.  And so we're out here today cleaning up some more and we will be out here in October as well.

[Jack Durst] So, tell me how much it's different...

[Martin] It's considerably different.  There's a number of tags that we weren't able to get to because of lack of people and supplies So we did a lot in the fall and we did a lot more but there's still a lot to be done.

More things you can do to help protect the #LakeTahoe Environment

Click here for the Bonsai Rock scenic gallery if your browser does not support embedded Google+ posts.

Let me just say that there's been huge progress in making and maintaining our environmental gains here in Lake Tahoe, and I want to let all you guys know that keeping Tahoe blue is something that all of you can do.  Come out, later this fall we'll be having a much bigger Bonsai Beach cleanup and getting Bonsai Beach totally pristine.  

You can go to the 5th of July cleanup in Marla Bay and help clean up the fireworks debris after 4th of July.  It's a real easy one-day project.  If you're a Tahoe local you can become a Pipe Keeper: pick a pipe and monitor the effluent coming out of it.  All of these things are available so you can you can do your part to help keep Tahoe blue.  Or, if you're not a local and you just want to give to the cause you can visit KeepTahoeBlue.org and give to the League to Save Lake Tahoe and we'll see so much more environmental progress here in Lake Tahoe.