Like mentioned it was some young dumbass taggers who did that. I have seen that crew BTC pieced in a much better style on walls, too bad whoever from this crew did this was too concerned with trying to catch fame to respect quality art.

They use a fire extinguisher or super soaker filled with diluted paint to make tags like that for hard to cover larger surfaces higher up. That medium for tagging has recently become popular, and is one of the many ways vandalism has changed as a response to aggressive graffiti abatement programs that buffed everything. They began painting over everything, including the generally secluded places where writers could paint quality pieces that took time. This occurred just when tagbanging began blowing up, and combined these 2 developments in LA graffiti basically ate away at the piecing-art aspect of the medium in Los Angeles. And funding for art programs and school art classes continued to decline, and youth programs never got the funding they needed to adequately address the huge juvenile delinquincy problem (aka poor kids with nothing to do). But graffiti did not go away, it just became more socially deviant, violent and destructive with the collabo-breakdancing-piecer element taking a backseat.

Kids did not just stop painting because it got buffed quicker, and the environmental factors that lead kids to destroy another’s property (even if it is sometimes art) did not go away, they probably got worse. But the incentive was gone to paint nice pieces because they got erased quickly, so style based fame in graffiti quickly took a back seat to who bombed and tagged more (they both always existed in LA graffiti, but just look at the the ages of writers who turned their graff into an art career is a pretty good indicator of how that gateway dwindled after the mid 90s). So rather than using 10 cans and a few hours to do a badass piece that may get buffed quickly, it became much better in terms of graff fame to use those same cans and time to tag half the city rather than one spot. The worst part is that the positive part of graff I saw and experienced, which was seeing the dysfunctional kids who came into the medium for pure criminality get turned onto and pretty good at art became much more rare, whereas the outright criminality became much more prevalent (tagbanging, being basically a gangster who tags rather than claims a neighborhood).

This trend contiinues on, art programs still are neglected and politicos still vow to get “tough on graffiti” despite every past “get tough” program being abysmal failures. Taggers are basically gangbanging junior nowadays, shooting at each other and emulating the cholo culture they dont full-on engage in but still respect and imitate. The funding for graffiti abatement is lopsided towards painting everything with shitty beige buff paint rather than proactively stopping kids from tsgging walls. So the spaces where graff existed got smaller and was guarded more fiercely, and no wviolently, by writers; and the places that were once taboo to tag such as murals are seen as a place where one’s tag will run much longer by opportunistic writers.

The kind of selfishness and egomania it takes for one to rationalize defacing one of eastlos’ most famous murals and buildings for a shitty tag that doesnt even look nice is a reflection of the narcicism driven culture we live in. Like when someone cuts you off in line and dogs you for it, or how buying hummers and flipping homes blinded people to the impending doom making up BS money created, pure greed and selfishness for a short burst of wealth that has now created long term poverty.

I saw this selfishness and negativity overcome something I loved and helped me get thru my struggles, graffiti. It never was a good thing unless you only did permission walls, and most writers have always been self absorbed assholes, but the artistic vein of graff that turned me on is now muted by all the selfish negativity. We had celebrated a half decade of keeping an open space for kids to practice graffiti recently, only to have it ruined by fuckfaces who’d rather flash a gun or hurt somebody than develop the skills to excel in graffiti (something theyre supposedly down for) through creating tight work. The county now cites these dudes pulling guns on code enforcement for legal walls and hitting innocents with strays as why they are rebeginning to buff these walls we foguth so hard to make open for kids to develop their skills.

There is no logic to this act, like much of graffiti, it is a medium that is born from and caters to social deviance. But even thing that are the most destructive have good aspects, I still see graffiti as holding the potential to turn a lot of deviant youth into positive action.

I love the mural of Anthony Quinn over on 3rd street at Broadway on the side of the Victor Clothing bldg.

I hate what has happened to the murals on the Hollywood fwy thru downtown that were first put up for the 1984 LA Summer Olympics.
I especially liked the one with the space and planets theme, some of the these murals have been painted over and others have been sadly tagged up.
These knuckle heads need a “cuete” up their butt.

The Destructive Impulse, some say, is also a creative impulse. Not really true, but, it’s a poetic justification for the inevitable damage of power struggles.

I think these 20-foot tall letters are the popular thing right now. They’re all over the place. Ugly as hell, but maybe that’s intentional.