Results tagged “graffiti”

If you've ever seen the stickers on buses or around stations and bus benches asking "Who is John Scott?" the mystery is over. He is 74-year-old John Scott (yeah, he has a website) of Los Angeles, the oldest tagger (specifically, a slap tagger because they are stickers) caught by LA County Sheriff's Deputies, finds the LA Times. He was arrested this morning, ending a seven-month mystery, at the 7th/Metro Station in downtown after putting up a sticker.

Yesterday, the City Council voted unanimously in favor of a proposed ordinance that would mandate all new buildings (residential and business) have a graffiti-resistant coating applied to the exterior, reports the Daily News.

Today the Los Angeles City Council will consider a new city ordinance that would require all buildings--yes, residential homes, too--to be anti-graffiti coated from the ground to at least nine feet. However, owners may choose to skip the requirement as long as they sign an agreement that any graffiti on their building will be removed within seven days, according to the Daily News. That's a good exception because the coating can discolor a surface or are not always environmentally friendly. And not to mention the burden of time and money on families.

Can an ALS patient in a hospital bed create graffiti along the 10 freeway? Yes, yes one can through some hardcore programming, the movement of the patient's eyes and some really amazing creativity. Meet Eye Writer, described as "the latest ocular assault weapon from the Graffiti Research Lab, openFrameworks and The Ebeling Group...

Jesus Sanchez, the blogger behind The Eastsider LA, found that street artist Shepard Fairey put an anti-graffiti coating on the brick walls of his art gallery and ad agency in Echo Park. Fairey explained that "when graff seeped into the raw brick it was very difficult to clean. The building is historic and I love and want to protect the brick." The new anti-graffiti coating will make abatement easier, but will not stop graffiti.

When will we learn? Just because they spray paint cans may seem harmless doesn't mean the people using are not. A man who approached taggers in Santa Ana this morning was attacked, says the LA Times: "The 38-year-old was walking near the intersection of McFadden and Orange avenues just after 2 a.m. when he saw a group of three young men painting graffiti on a wall, said Santa Ana Police Cmdr. Tammy Franks. The man told them to stop. After pausing, the three men, joined by two others, surrounded the man and began hitting, kicking and stabbing him in the torso. The man, whose name was not released, was taken to the hospital and is recovering from injuries that are not life-threatening." He got lucky and we thank him for his bravery. However, many times people are murdered over this. The LAPD says if you witness a tagger, clear the area and call 911.

The Echo Park based artist who made President Obama's iconic poster image pleaded guilty today to three vandalism charges in a Boston Municipal Court. Shepard Fairey was accused of 28 counts of vandalism, but prosecutors dropped 14 charges last month and 11 of them today. "He pleaded guilty to one charge of defacing property and two charges of wanton destruction of property under $250," according to the Associated Press. As part of his two-year probation, he will have to pay $2,000 to a graffiti removal organization and is banned from carrying tagging materials unless he is working on a legal art installation.

Remember back in February when local artist Shepard Fairey was arrested in Boston for allegedly sticker slapping and postering in Boston? Well, this week, 13 charges were dropped, but he still faces more from a September 16th, 2000 incident in which he did not appear for his arraignment the next day. "We're happy that those cases have been dismissed and we're looking forward to others being dismissed as well that rely on the same set of facts that these did," Fairey's lawyer said, noting "that the evidence against Fairey included commercially available stickers featuring images of his work which could have been posted by anybody," explained the Boston Globe.

Parents, take heed. If your kid tags, sticker slaps or otherwise destroys property by defacing it, you may be stuck with the bill. The Los Angeles City Council preliminarily approved a new graffiti ordinance today, but will have to approve it once more next week because not enough members were present at today's meeting. If a minor is found guilty, the parents could be liable up to $25,000. Get nerdy below and read the full blown ordinance below:

    

Tonight the Crewest Gallery downtown is celebrating its seventh anniversary with the third installment of the group art show CANceptual, featuring both young and established artists. Under the mantra, "Recycle your spray cans...make some art...save the Earth," Crewest encourages artists to find those old rusted cans and recycle them by turning them into fine art pieces for sale at the gallery.

    

LA graffiti artist Chaka (Daniel Ramos) moves his work from the street to the studio. His solo show "Resurrection" opens Saturday night at Mid-City Arts.

There’ s an evening showcase by New Filmmakers LA at Sunset Gower Studios. Short films by Bruno Miotto, Nicholas Wong, Robert E. Sperlinga and Sean Christensen, will be screened at 5:45 pm with feature films at 7 and 9 pm. The first feature is the LA premiere of Gigantic (starring Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman), followed by another LA premiere of Goodnight Irene (a foreign feature from Portugal starring Golden Globe winner Nuno Lopes). Guests will have an opportunity to meet the directors and actors from the films and participate in a Q&A. Tickets are a steal at $6 -- and that also includes an an open bar and appetizers.

A county-wide sweep conducted by Los Angeles County Sheriff's in partnership with several local police agencies has been underway since early this morning in the hopes of netting "graffiti offenders on probation," reports the Star-News.

The California Department of Transportation has told local officials how many miles they've covered and at what cost in 2008, according to abc7.com. Here's a look at some of the numbers:

Steve Harvey's "Only in L.A." column this weekend heads underground to some familiar LAist territory: The Belmont Tunnel. The one-mile stretch used to be LA's first--and only--subway, opening in 1925 but shut down thirty years later. Harvey notes that once the Red Cars stopped using the tunnel, it was put to work as "a storage site for survival rations, a holding cell for impounded vehicles, a movie set and, unofficially, a giant graffiti canvas and field of study for urban explorers."

This is nothing new, but on today's City Council agenda (.pdf) are motions to pay $1,000 to citizens for helping police catch taggers in five different locations around Los Angeles:

Respect, reward and recognition are the three "R's" of graffiti. Cyrus Yazdani, the graffiti tagger known as "Buket" who bragged about his exploits by uploading videos of himself to YouTube, was definitely recognized when he pleaded guilty yesterday to 32 counts of felony vandalism. The 25-year-old San Jose State graduate was rewarded with "to 10 months in county jail, 256 hours of graffiti removal and five years formal probation," found the LA Times. If you're curious, watch two of the videos here.

Time and time again, we hear about well-intentioned people being murdered when they speak up against someone doing graffiti. Case in point, it happened again this week in Hollywood.

Wearing a symbol of your crime on your chest for all to see is at least as old a punishment as Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, and this old school-style discipline is making a comeback.

With one TSA Officer and one other security guard stationed on both sides of this "Welcome to Los Angeles" sign in LAX's Terminal 7 right before passengers enter the baggage claim area, how did this small tooth-gapping graffiti happen?

On October 1st, the city's Office of Community Beautification quietly launched an improved website tool they should have been much louder and much more proud about. The Anti-Graffiti Request System is an easy and quick way to report graffiti in your neighborhood so abatement teams can come out and clean it up. It comes complete with an e-mail confirmation once your report is submitted and once the graffiti is abated, which is often the next day.

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Remember when artist Richard Ankrom posed as a Caltrans employee and "fixed" the 110 North to 5 North (the left lane after the four tunnels) sign? He made it easier for commuters unfamiliar with the route when he added the directions to a freeway sign? It took him nine months and it was so well done Caltrans kept it up and did not press charges (we called Caltrans and the sign he put up is still up today).

Steve Lopez has a good knack for getting stories about the City of LA in their stupid moments. The latest is about a family store in Highland Park that was getting tagged by taggers and gangsters on an almost daily basis. The family would clean the graffiti, it would soon come back. So the family hired two respected street artists for $3000 to paint a mural and the tagging stopped. Well, someone complained about the mural and the city sent a letter ordering the family to comply and take the art down (the mural needed a permit). They didn't, so the city painted it for them (in an unmatched color). What almost immediately happened next? Graffiti.

Mahalo took a day and tagged along with Pacific Graffiti Solutions, one of the city's many graffiti cleanup contractors. Pacific untags a large area, from Mulholland Dr. to the 105 Freeway and from the Ocean to La Brea.

In light of the new graffiti law Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law this week, the Associated Press has looked into a concerning pattern about graffiti taggers and the public's safety. Over the past couple years, four people have died when approaching or witnessing taggers in action.

When a tagger gets sentenced, it's up to the judge whether or not being on a clean up crew is part of the punishment or not. Soon, it will be mandatory after Governor Schwarzenegger signed some new graffiti legislation sponsored by Los Angeles that forces part of their punishment to be cleaning graffiti. City officials say graffiti has increased significantly in the past few years, from "25 million square feet of graffiti-stained surfaces in 2005 to 31.7 million in the year that ended June 30," reports the LA Times. But could it also be that with the success of the 24-hour operator staffed 3-1-1 city hotline: more people can easily report graffiti than before. You can also report graffiti online.

A week ago Sunday, the London paper, Mail on Sunday, revealed "compelling evidence suggesting" the identity of the famous and anonymous street artist, Banksy, as Robin Gunningham. To date Gunningham nor Banksy's agent or spokesperson, have not confirmed this. And a note from Banksy's on his website says "anyone described as 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like Banksy to me."

On October 28, 1966, commuters between Malibu and the Valley were surprised by the image of a large, running depiction of a naked woman. Sixty feet tall, painted in pink house paint, she was quickly dubbed The Pink Lady.