Saturday, June 13, 2009
Eaton Canyon Falls Graffiti Survey
Today I hiked up to the Eaton Canyon Falls, and I took a picture of every surface that had paint on it, either covering old graffiti, brand new graffiti or both. As you can tell by looking at all the painted over rocks and walls, graffiti is nothing new under the bridge and along the whole creek bed, however make sure you go all the way through to the end of the slide show. The walls and rocks of the canyon by the falls have been spray painted on a scale that is unusual, judging by the fact that many of the surfaces that are defaced do not have abatement paint behind them.
It's hard to tell from the photos just how disturbing it is to see in person. It reminds me of pre-Giuliani Central Park. This video, panning around the falls area helps illustrate how terrible this is.
I plan on calling this defacement into the graffiti hotline now, and will update this post with the confirmation number(s). The county has previously been extremely prompt about taking care of graffiti. We'll see how long this takes to clean up, as it's far less accessible. I suppose they'll hike in with supplies, as a helicopter drop off seems overkill for graffiti.
Update: I just got off the phone with the Graffiti Hotline.
LACO Graffiti Hotline 800-675-4357 option 2
The woman who answered told me they should have it cleaned up by Wednesday. (confirmation #108516)
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What's terrible isn't just the buildup of graffiti over time... I was out there a couple weeks ago, quite a lot of that is brand new.
ReplyDeleteHey man, its art.
ReplyDeleteLeave these people alone. We can't be oppressive of artists. Who do you think you are?
Do it in the road man,....its okay man, as long as they aren't hurting anybody.
Why are you such a hater? This is a racist blog full of hate-speech.
I'm going to stop downloading this web page.
Yes, most of the tags look new. The paint is still glossy. In particular the tag Ruf and variants of that are extremely prevalent. Some of the other large multi-color tags are Tatum, Smuk, Mireya and a aborted attempt at Voner. Vonbon/Voner, Cupcake and Caspar are fairly prevalent as small tags. There are also a few groupings with other tags mixed in like Bugs. I also note that there are at least two instances where 09 is written.
ReplyDeleteIn design school I read a few books about "subway art" which featured many dozens of photographs of quite accomplished and sophisticated graffiti compositions. With regard to the artistic merit of this defacement, it all looks very crude and ham handed, leading me to think that this is a bunch of rookies. So even if it were not painted on the most inappropriate location possible, it has zero artistic merit. My instinct is that this was a bunch of high school kids.
@Isaac: hahaha! ROFLMAO
ReplyDeleteSo sad, too painful to see the whole video.
ReplyDeleteI meant to blog about this, but the good news is, I hiked up there last weekend, and 99% of the graffiti in these pics and videos has been covered over. It might seem just as bad to hear about rocks being painted over to "remove" the graffiti, but it really is so much better. Since the abatement, a few minor new tags have re-appeared, but it's significantly better down there now.
ReplyDeleteYou either "celebrate diversity" or you don't. Angelenos prattle on about their "richly diverse" environments, except when those they've defensively dubbed with diplomatic euphemisms show up for a picnic and an afternoon of spray painting. Once upon a time, the local police would have pulled over a carload of Tatums, Smuks, and Mireyas before they were two blocks from the freeway off-ramp, but that isn't done anymore, and you get to share nature equally.
ReplyDelete