Sidewalk Chalk Artist Fight Chalk Addictions

Bart is a sidewalk chalk artist with a dusty problem.

No, they are not heroine junkies or meth addicts, but you're close; these people are chalk sniffers, former chalk artists whose lives have been washed out like a sidewalk mural after a spring rain.

Chalk sniffing isn't something that can be rubbed out with a chamois. While chalk sniffers are like bad pixels on the monitors of our lives, most of these people were simple buskers who got rubbed the wrong way.

Bart (not his real name, which is actually Steve), started out as a sidewalk chalk artist. Bart would draw murals, commission portraits for tourists, and often created replicas of Michelangelo's work using just a handful of coloured chalk. Once, he did a nude chalk drawing of Yoko Ono on a London sidewalk, but tragically it was washed away after only an hour when four basset-hounds and a basenji accompanied by a dog-walker urinated on her chalky image (the dog-walker was subsequently arrested for peeing in public). Bart perfected his trade and went on to do professional chalk menu writing for restaurants, diners, and pubs, enjoying great success from his chalky talents.

But, as with all chalk artists who refused to take the proper precautions while they worked (wearing proper ventilation masks, using organic natural chalks, or drawing with dust-free electric chalk guns), Bart had inhaled millions of chalk dust particles that were created as a by-product of his chalk drawings. Bart became hooked on the colorful powder, and eventually ended up putting more up his nose than on the sidewalks.

At one time, chalk was considered a healthy elixir, and people ingested it as part of a normal regimen of health and nutrition. Mixed with water, milk, or Tang, chalk was consumed daily to prevent bone deficiencies, tooth decay, and scurvy. But by the early 1980's doctors noticed that heavy chalk drinkers usually became addicted to the pasty substance. Further research showed that chalkdust had similar properties to opium and laudenum--both of which were also used as medicinal ingredients a century ago--and it was discontinued as a health supplement.

The problem of chalk sniffing or "dusting" as it is often called on the street, is that is as annoying to public officials as fingernails across a chalkboard. Sidewalk chalks can be bought almost anywhere, including most dollar stores and school supply outlets, and there are no regulations in place for the proper use of chalk. There's practically nothing that can be done to prevent people from sticking the chalk up their nose, except perhaps making the chalk bigger.

Chalk addictions can be broken, with proper education, public awareness, and constant beatings with long wooden pointers, but for chalk artists, such as Bart, the chalk writing is on the walls. If Bart can't erase his chalk-sniffing problem, it may be necessary for him to give up his artistic profession altogether, or at the very least, move on to non-toxic wax crayons or scent-free coloured markers.