One of the GAYTMs ANZ installed to celebrate Auckland Pride Festival has been hit in a paint attack overnight. UPDATE: Pair of youths blamed for GAYTM attack ANZ has tweeted "Our Ponsonby GAYTM was vandalised this morning. Sadly some people still ignorant and intolerant." However it promises "we'll have it back and glittering soon". GayNZ.com's reporter at the scene says the paint is being cleaned off by Graffiti-Guard staff. They say it appears a bucket of white enamel paint was hurled at it early this morning. It's since partially dried and is proving hard to remove, though most has been scrubbed away now using solvents, cloths and brushes. The paint is also splattered on the footpath below and the ANZ sign above the ATM. The piece at 312 Ponsonby Rd is made up of 120 thousand rhinestones and took artist Reuben Paterson 300 hours to put together. The bank installed two GAYTMs in Auckland and one in Wellington to celebrate diversity, stating "the GAYTMs represent values that are important to all of us: respect, inclusion, equality and acceptance." The vandalism comes just a day before the Auckland Pride Parade makes its way down Ponsonby Rd. The paint attack bears similarities to last year's vandalism at Centurian gay sauna in Beresford Square, where a women was caught on CCTV camera hurling paint in its doorway. Cameras are likely to have caught the Ponsonby Rd culprit.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 20th February 2015 - 8:37am