It is no picnic for residents and city officials either; the emotional impact on homeowners is even greater partly because graffiti might represent growing crime in the area, which none of us want in our community.

Also known as tagging, it’s an ugly form of vandalism that hits city revenues, community morale and property values. If that wasn’t bad enough, it also promotes crime and communicates a damaging message that no one cares about the appearance and safety of the region.

Many cities around the country, From Phoenix, Arizona and Fort Collins, Colorado to San Francisco and New York City, are developing initiatives and taking action to reduce and eliminate graffiti.

Some cities are launching hotlines that allow people to report signs of graffiti in their area. Residents in various regions of New York can call and put in a request for a local clean-up team to remove paint from their buildings caused by vandals.

In Sunnyside, N.Y., city officials secured a one-year, $30,000 anti-graffiti grant that will help them establish a hotline program that promises to respond to local businesses and homeowners within seven days at no cost.

Anti-graffiti organizations like SodaBlast Systems’ Best Graffiti Removal, work with city officials and business leaders to remove it as quickly as possible to restore the property to its original condition.

Boat hull damage is caused by coming in contact with objects in the sea or the result of rot. But you can make a fiberglass boat hull look new again. Here are a few pointers:

If your boat has significant damage, haul it out of the water and do a thorough inspection of the entire surface; for boats with minor to moderate damage above the water line, the hull can be repaired while the boat is docked.

If you want to know if your boat hull might be damaged and in need of repair, you can tap the area in question with a screwdriver. You are generally looking to hear a solid noise, which means the damage is not extensive. If the noise is hollow, you could be looking at larger, more expensive problem.

One of the best solutions is sodablasting your fiberglass hull. “Sodablast Systems makes, in my opinion, probably the best and simplest blast unit I have ever seen,” said Terry (with Blaster Master in Canada). “It is extremely simpole to use and fill; training on it takes about 10 minutes.”

For more information about boat repair, visit www.sodablastboats.com

A boat gliding across the water at 25 to 30 miles per hour and hitting waves spaced every few feet will create significant pressure on the boat bottom and causes vibration to travel through the fiberglass. You also want to make sure the gelcoat remains strong during the cleaning and restoring process.

Damage to boats can include gouges to the fiberglass caused by scrapes against rocks, debris, obstructions in the water, trailers from when the boats are removed and replaced and collisions.

Even leaving the boat in the water for long periods of time with little or no attention and maintenance can lead to a boat developing gelcoat damage and blisters.

Repairing broken fiberglass and damaged gelcoat along with restoring a boat hull by hand is a long and tedious process that can take several people multiple days to complete.

Tasks include sanding, buffing, glossing, blending, smoothing and painting. That’s why more people prefer sodablasting over any other solution available. Imagine calling someone out to do all this work in one or two days max while you focus on your specialty areas, whether it’s customer service, marketing, building boats, meeting with clients and more.

Soda blasting frees you up to focus on what you’re good at, but also makes your workers available for other jobs as well. You will quickly discover the cost and times savings by hiring a certified contractor to handle the job for you.

If you need to repaint the boat, you will also need to make sure you match the new colors up with existing colors for a decent – ideally, perfect – finish.

There is a website that helps you pick colors to fix those nicks, scratches and scrapes easily. AutomotiveTouchUp.com boasts services that let you choose paint pens, brush-in-cap bottles or aerosol cans to tackle small or large jobs.

More than 100,000 original factor colors are available at an affordable price for cars, trucks and SUVs, according to the website. So does that mean you can duplicate that favorite shiny silver and blue you spotted Saturday night in the restaurant parking lot on the hot 1960s convertible mustang?

We tried it. Using a 1964 ½ White Mustang Pace car as our model type, we found the code is YG for Pace Car White and available in various sizes from $9.95 for a touch-up bottle to $79.95 for a ready-to-spray quart size.

Using another vehicle – a blue 1998 Dodge Durango – we found the paint code, PB3 for “Intense Blue Pearl” - available as well. The neat thing about this website is that the recent years include paint chip colors on the screen so we could actually see the blue as well as the code and name. Not that it’s a big deal, but helpful.

Next time you’re out and about and inspired by a particular car and color for your next project, take note of the car make and model and visit this website to source out the code.

While we’re still a long way off from doing everything in green mode, the idea is that we need to start somewhere. Doing something as simple as washing your car at a drive-thru facility is better than soaping up your wheels at home.

Washing your car at home generally takes 50 gallons of freshwater compared to a drive-thru facility that only uses 14 gallons. There are a number of cleaning products on the market today that are green and eco-friendly for auto enthusiasts who prefer to skip the drive-thru car wash. Waterless solutions are designed to clean cars without dumping hazardous materials and chemicals down the drain. They are safe to use on fiberglass, metal, glass and chrome.

So you save H2O, avoid contaminating the environment and use a simple, affordable and safe method of cleaning – clearly a win-win.

Auto body shops are adopting new methods and trying out odorless, chemical-free paints that don’t pollute the environment and car care centers are switching to using parts and components that emit fewer emissions and toxins.

Even hot rod restoration experts are recycling more on environmentally-friendly media solutions, such as sodablasting, to remove paints and contaminates from body surfaces.

The new website provides resources, tips, advice and links for marine industry professionals, boat owners and restoration experts on green cleaning.

Get information on boat hull cleaning, tips on how to remove blisters without harming the gelcoat and locate a certified sodablaster.

SodaBlasting is a process that involves a network of certified, specially-trained, independent Preferred Contractors who rely on mobile equipment to do the job on-site. They install the plastic tenting around the boat, perform the SodaBlasting and then wrap up the paint and other residue for disposal.

Boat professionals and restoration experts prefer sodablasting because it saves time and money cleaning and sanitizing without using harsh chemicals. The new website also has information about how damaging it is to the hull or gelcoat when you use the wrong cleaning methods.

Sodablasting is ideal for the marine industry:

• Marine Industry for:
• Boat Buyers Inspections
• Hull Preparation
• Paint & Antifoulant Stripping
• Gelcoat Safe Stripping
• Hull Blister Preparation
• Eco-Friendly Hull Stripping

The website includes an interactive area that allows users to view the cleaning process and leave feedback for company officials.

Muscle cars and classic hot rods hold our fascination through the generations - maybe your parents bought your first car for you and now you are eagerly waiting for the day you hand the keys over to your children (or not!).

Regardless of what your first car was or what your favorite hot rod is now, there is something about summer that makes it an ideal time for getting back to that car restoration project, reflecting on the nostalgia of your auto or just enjoying a local cruise-in with people who have similar interests in cars.

Muscle car enthusiasts have a fascination with the look and body of their hot rods as well as an appreciation for how it was constructed. Restoring muscle cars can be a long, expensive and frustrating process at times. That’s because many hot rod enthusiasts try to make the finished product look as authentic as the original and they do this by trying to locate old, original parts that are restored or easy to rehab.

If they can’t do that, many people will try to find parts that closely resemble what is supposed to be there. Of course, the hunt to find those missing pieces for your car restoration project can be fun and thrilling. Have you ever wondered what’s stored away in those barns off the country roads? Or what’s locked up and forgotten in the old storage shed behind the abandoned shop?

Email us and tell us your favorite car – what make, model and year is it? What color and why is it your favorite? Even if you don’t own it any longer, tell us about the set of wheels that makes your heart flutter – and why.

And for the record, one of our favorite cars is the mid-1960s two-door Ford Mustang Coupe. It has a body and power that garners attention and respect without demanding it.

But customizing, restoring and rebuilding hot rods shows no signs of slowing down; which is good news for industry players who are responsible for serving those car hobby enthusiasts. Despite the sales and market trends – call it what you want: stagnant, flat, down, belly-up, unpredictable (by far, our favorite definition), confusing, overwhelming, the list goes on – we still enjoy hanging out in the garage and tinkering with the old two-door 1957 cherry-red Classic Chevy hard-top.

In fact, the Great Recession has inspired us to spend our discretionary funds more (dare we say wisely?) differently.

Instead of taking elaborate, long and luxurious vacations that are costly, we’ve seen classic car owners choose to focus on projects and goals they have thought about for a long time over spending two week’s salary on a trip to the Redwoods.

And we’re with you - our idea of fun doesn’t include waxing the car or doing the dreaded oil change; the good news is there is a lot of work between stripping the car to bare metal for a clean surface to installing performance-enhancing components that gives your car some muscle.

If anything, the recent economic trends may have just slowed us down enough to give us perspective and a sense of nostalgia about our hot rods. And serve as a road map on where to go from here, of course. Admit it, there’s nothing difficult about choosing to restore your first car, a classic that’s sat in your garage for 12 years – over taking another camping trip with your neighbors to the same Florida park you’ve gone to every summer the past four years.

We talk to many people who either had classic cars when they were younger and now long for an opportunity to restore their auto or wished they had a muscle car “back then” and hope to use this time in their life as parents to share a hobby with their own children.

The more than 33,000 marine businesses in the United States support some 500,000 well-paying American jobs. The number of boats in use in 2004 was 17.6 million, an increase of 210,000 over 2003 and a more than 12.5 percent increase from 1989.

There are approximately 71.3 million boaters in the United States. Despite a modest drop in overall boating participation during the past 15 years, it is clear that interest in boating is once again gaining traction among the American public.

Certainly, the demographics are ripe for a significant increase in participation, with the baby boomer generation now reaching the age where time and financial resources for boating are no longer constraints but opportunities.

Recreational boating and fishing are closely tied, with approximately 60-70 percent of boaters claiming to use their boats for angling. The FishAmerica Foundation, founded and largely financially supported by boating and fishing companies, represents a highly successful conservation grant giving program, well-regarded within the conservation and environmental communities.

According to the Foundation, FishAmerica provides “nearly $1 million in matching grants each year to community partners across the country.

Over the last 20 years, FishAmerica has provided more than $6 million for nearly 750 grassroots conservation projects that improve fisheries habitat and fishing opportunities.”