Mayor V To “Unofficial” Murals: Adios

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I was just forwarded this link from yesterday’s LAT. Slightly unsettling to say the least.

In Boyle Heights, inspectors arrived at Joe Escobedo’s Rosemead Radiator Shop on Wabash Avenue a few weeks ago to tell him to remove the spray-painted mural he had commissioned for the west-facing brick wall of his business.

A tagger who called himself Keo had approached him about five years ago saying, ” ’You got a nice wall there. Want a mural?’ ” Escobedo recalled.

“I told him, ’Do something nice, something I’m going to like,’ ” Escobedo said Wednesday, his face and work clothes a little oil-stained. “You’ve got to get close to figure it out, but it does have something to do with radiators.”

The mural shows the name of the shop in bold graffiti-like letters next to a pair of cartoonish radiators. Keo received $300 for the job and periodically returns to touch up the mural when taggers or gang members vandalize it, Escobedo said.

But the city recently issued an order saying Escobedo must whitewash the wall and that a nonprofit art group would come to paint a new mural for him.

Yikes. The example above clearly seems to indicate the wrong approach.

Note to gestapo: Stay away from the corner of melrose and fairfax. I have it on good record this wall is 100% endorsed by Mayor V.