ALZA, Los Paisanos, Meet City Hall
August 18, 2008
The intersection of Aldama Street and Milwaukee Avenue in Highland Park is primarily a residential area, a mix of apartment buildings and modest single family homes.
There are, however, two small mom-and-pop style markets on Aldama. The larger of the two markets is Los Paisanos on the corner of Milwaukee and Aldama. Until recently, Los Paisanos was painted white, and its owners, the Antonios, state it was often a target for graffiti vandals. Then, in an effort to combat the tagging, the Antonios contracted with ALZA for a paint job and his trademark graffiti style signage. Whatever else can be said of ALZa, young taggers do seem to leave his artworks alone. Here is the ALZA job, complete with a "Wild Style" tag message along the side of the building. (More about Wild Style Grafitti here, heck, you can even buy Wild Style fonts for your computer)
A neighbor in the area complained to the City about the new signage. The city of L.A. ordered it painted over. The Antonios state the street- variety taggers have returned. Local media has taken up the Antonio's cause
Read the Los Angeles Times story by Steve Lopez here
Local bloggers, walterrrrr and El Chavo, are not exactly ALZA fans, and are less sympathic. Me? One of the remarkable things about being an "older woman" is that one can get away with a shrug and a sigh. It is what it is. :-)
Ok,
there is the question of do we like or not like his work, but ultimately my questions is: WHY WASN’T THE MURAL PERMITED BEFORE COMPLETION???
I have seen some really ugly murals go up; however, if the city approves and gives a permit, it would take allot more then one neighbor complaining for it to come down. It’s actually not that hard to get a city permit. And costs pennies. I recently spoke to a guy who is doing a similar style mural on a business, the mural is fantastic! But, I asked him if he pulled a permit to avoid it being taken down, and his rationalization for not getting a permit was that this style of art is meant to be recyclable, it’s fast and easy to do, and if it gets taken down, you just do a different one. I guess I sort of see his point, however, does the shop owner who is paying 3000$ know this?!!! I can’t speak for all graffiti artist, but maybe choosing to un-permit their work, may also be an incentive for media attention. This has drawn quite a bit of interest just because it was covered up. Maybe if he had gone through the legal system it would have been just another graffiti stylized mural. It’s a though.
Posted by: Lola | September 20, 2008 at 03:09 PM