HOUSTON — The famous “Be Someone” sign has had several reincarnations, since a graffiti artist originally painted in 2012. The most recent “re-do” was just 2 days ago.
That’s when college students re-painted the words that had been painted over in black, earlier in the week. They feel it was a big service to the city.
The guys go by their social media names, “Prince Abdullaaa,” “Mohamed” and CJ. At 6 a.m. Saturday morning, with a brush and bucket of white paint they headed to the train bridge above I-45, in downtown Houston.
“That ‘Be Someone sign’ means so much to so many people,” the young men say in a video they uploaded to Youtube.
“We’re trying to put Houston on the map for that platform,” CJ tells KHOU.
“We’re not street artists, never graffitied anything in my life,” Mohamed tells us.
“We’re spreading a positive message,” adds Prince Abdullaaa.
It is very dangerous to go on the train bridge to paint the letters.
“It’s scary. If you fall, it’s straight to the highway,” says “the Prince.”
Cell phone video shows them taking took turns, holding each other’s feet, to make sure they didn’t fall over the over-pass..
“I hang over, and he’s got my feet and I start going at it and I’m painting and it feels so liberating,” says Mohamed.
“It was just like, we got the first letter, it was just inspiration to do the rest.”
To help guide them paint the letters, they looked upside down at their phone -- all while keeping track of the tracks right next to them!
“We’re on a bridge. Train’s coming. We got to make sure we jump out of the way.”
It’s technically trespassing and illegal, but these Houston vloggers say if the “Be Someone” message is painted over again, they’ll proudly paint it back. It’s still not clear who painted over the letters, last Tuesday morning.
The men tells us they first used orange paint, but stopped after the letter “B,” because they didn’t like the way it looked.