CORRECTION

The sex of Shane Trahan, co-chairman of the Mordecai Citizens Advisory Council, was misidentified in a report Thursday in the City & State section. Trahan is male.

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RALEIGH -- It's an ugly list, from the spray-painted squiggles on an electrical box to the silver hieroglyphics on a pay phone.

Graffiti are blaring from enough street corners now that a Raleigh citizens' group has decided to take inventory and present the city with a roster.

"It kind of popped up out of nowhere," said Shane Trahan, co-chairwoman of the Mordecai Citizens Advisory Council. "You used to see it on the trains, and it would go away. But now you see it around the neighborhood and think, 'This isn't cool.' "

No one would describe Mordecai, an older neighborhood just north of downtown, as coated with spray paint. Few suspect gangs are involved.

But residents hope that presenting the city with a complete list rather than a piecemeal report of every squiggle on a trash bin will get the mess erased quickly, and discourage copycats.

Graffiti have been spotted on the sidewalk near the Mordecai Manor apartment building, near Peace College and all over electrical boxes -- a favorite target.

"It's a flat surface and easy to paint on," said Philip Bernard, the other co-chairman.

Raleigh has dealt with a graffiti problem for the last few years, and police arrested about 10 people in 2003, partly because of protests over the Iraq war.

The city inspections agency gets 15 to 20 graffiti complaints a year, though the police may get more, said Robert Spruill, housing-environmental inspections administrator.

During the summer, the city power-washed graffiti in the Pleasant Ridge and Ramsgate communities, calling it gang-related vandalism.

"To us, it's a damage-to-property crime," police spokesman Jim Sughrue said. "There's three types of graffiti: gang-related, plain-old vandalism and misdirected art urges."

Other communities in the Triangle have found themselves erasing unwanted art.

Last week, vandals spray-painted parts of Chapel Hill High School, filled locks with glue and broke windows, creating an estimated $2,200 in damage.

In 2004, Durham officials said they spent about $28,000 removing about 80 graffiti around the city.

"We usually try to get it off in 24 to 48 hours," said Mitch Archer, who manages cleanup for the city. "Most of it can be power-washed, and we use a 'graffiti towel' with biodegradable chemicals."

Raleigh officials cite studies showing that removing graffiti within 48 hours is most likely to discourage repeats.

"Obviously, the person who has done that is going to be less inclined if it's just going to be erased before anybody can see it," Sughrue said.

So far, there are seven "paintings" on the list prepared by the Mordecai group. The group is concentrating only on its own neighborhood, though the list includes some images downtown and in Boylan Heights. Most of them are unintelligible to most people passing by -- just a name sprayed in black or blue.

One painting on Halifax Street, though, is a detailed drawing of a man with a cigarette, and it resembles the "Borf" figure that has turned up around N.C. State University.

"I've seen it before," Bernard said. "I think it's a group of young folks in a band."

Mostly, though, the graffiti are unreadable -- doomed, like so much art, to be misunderstood.