Have you ever been really frustrated by something in your community, but no matter what you do it feels like the issue will never be resolved?
That is how several residents felt about the potholes in their neighborhood in Acklam, Middlesbrough, UK. The roads were a total mess, but no matter how many times they tried to get the city council to address the growing pothole issue on their suburban street, their complaints seemed to always fall on deaf ears.
Eventually, they had had enough and decided to do something a little crazy.
The residents drew penises around every pothole in the neighborhood. “That would get the council’s attention,” they thought, and indeed it did. Nothing attracts attention quite like a bunch of giant dicks spray-painted all over the street.
They used a variety of different penis styles and colors to make sure they got their point across.
There were definitely some talented artists in the group!
The residents’ ingenious act of public mischief forced the council to finally address the issue.
After years of getting completely ignored by the authorities, the potholes suddenly became a top priority.
Acklam resident Brad Nicholson made a Facebook post in the Loving Acklam group showing a picture of how quickly the potholes got fixed once authorities became aware of the penises.
The potholes had been there for over a year, but after residents utilized the power of the Willy, the street was fixed within a day.
“It’s about time something was done about all the potholes in Middlesbrough,” Nicholson said.
However, in a somewhat laughable statement made to the BBC, the Middlesbrough council claimed that the penis graffiti had nothing to do with the potholes getting filled. They said they were already in the area filling potholes when the vandalism happened.
“Middlesbrough, like all local authority areas in the country, has issues with potholes and repairs are carried out on a priority basis determined by the risk they pose to highway users.
Currently, however, we are carrying out pre-planned works in the Acklam area and staff were able to visit the nearby site on Fane Grove when the matter was reported to us and have patched over the hole.”
Drawing dicks is a great way of getting noticed, but really, it’s nothing new.
Rebellious teenagers have been using this tactic for years to get attention and laughs.
Need to highlight an important section of a textbook? Draw a bunch of dicks around the border of the page.
Want to embarrass your teacher? Draw a big dick on the chalkboard when they aren’t looking. They certainly won’t be able to ignore it.
Your friend passes out at a party and you want them to realize they made a big mistake? Pull out a sharpie and scribble some dicks on their face. That’ll do the trick!
All morals aside, you can’t argue with the fact that penis drawing is a very effective strategy.
It’s a time tested technique for bringing attention to things that almost always works.
Whether you think what the Acklam residents did was right or wrong, the pictures don’t lie. Literally overnight, the pothole problem that had plagued the neighborhood for years was pretty much immediately solved.
See more pictures of the Acklam residents’ graffiti below.
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