Tagging at Venice Beach

Back in March of 2007 I took a friend from out of town to Venice Beach (it was on his list of places to see). I've been to Venice Beach hundreds of times over the years, and thought I'd "seen it all." But even I was a little surprised what we experienced. 

Apparently, the City of Los Angeles decided to allow - even encourage - graffiti and "tagging" in a small area along the boardwalk. Huh?

I guess the idea being: "vandalism and graffiti is going to happen; let's set aside one area where it can actually be legal." 

If you've never actually been to Los Angeles, vandalism caused by tagging has absolutely exploded in terms of impact and damage. It's a HUGE problem for the city, costing tens of millions of dollars every year to clean up. 

So it's hard to believe that the city would actually ENCOURAGE it - anywhere. Even at Venice Beach.

Looks like mom and dad brought their kids. Just another day at the beach. 

Yes, there is an aspect to graffiti that can actually be considered art. Maybe not my style, but art none the less. But much of what we saw was simply tagging. 

Like this. Next to the "designated" area, a palm tree was covered with graffiti. This is art?

Here's another view. Welcome to the beach. 

After walking around a bit, we headed back to my car. Spotted the Piano Man on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. Just one of the cast of characters that are part of the local community. 

A block away was a beautiful mural on the side of a building. Correction, formerly beautiful mural. 

Beautiful until it was vandalized by taggers. It's bad enough the see graffiti like this on blank walls. But on someone's artwork? I wondered if whoever did this "practiced" down the street on the city sponsored graffiti walls? 

There are thousands of murals throughout Los Angeles, and - unfortunately - hundreds of them have been vandalized by taggers. In some cases, the artists gave up and their work was painted over. Once again, poorer communities bear the brunt of this.

Apparently, the City of Los Angeles realized the tagging walls in Venice weren't such a great idea after all. A couple months after these photos were taken, they began to require a "permit" to spray paint the walls around the Venice Beach boardwalk (wonder how that's working out?) 

As an aside, my family and I were in Chicago for six weeks this past summer. NO graffiti - anywhere. And NO barbwire keeping people off freeway signs, walls, billboards, etc. The City of Chicago simply made it illegal to buy, sell, use or possess spray paint within city limits. Guess what? NO graffiti. Kind of nice. 

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Leaving A Mark at the La Brea Tar Pits

Last Fall, I spent a couple of hours walking along Wilshire Blvd. through Beverly Hills and the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles.

Smack dab in the middle of Los Angeles - located on our city's busiest street - is the La Brea Tar Pits.

The La Brea Tar Pits has the distinction of being the largest deposit of Ice Age fossils in the entire world.

It would be easy to spend a couple hours walking around outside the outdoor excavation sites as well as the adjacent Page Museum. If you've never been there, it's worth visiting. Here's a link: www.tarpits.org.

But as I was just passing through, for me it was a matter of just taking a couple extra minutes to snap some photos.

The large fiberglass mammoths (including one pictured above literally floating on the top of the largest tar pit) gives an idea of the kind of animals that existed in this area in pre-history Los Angeles - as well as the rest of North America. Really amazing. And right in the heart of the city.

One of the many urban problems here in Los Angeles is vandalism from graffiti, commonly known as "tagging." Millions of dollars are spent every year dealing with graffiti - which, unfortunately, only seems to get worse.

So while I'm no friend of the urban decay arising from taggers (more on that in a future post), I found something unique about tar from the La Brea Tar Pits being used by passer-byers to write their names or initials at a small observation platform right off Wilshire Blvd.

So what am I saying? That graffiti from spray paint, pens, or knives (etching on glass) is bad, but graffiti from tar on the wall next to the tar pits is fine?

As that doesn't make any sense, how about: graffiti limited to a 4 foot x 20 foot wall = fine. Everything else = bad.

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What Is - or What's Not - Art?

What's - or What's Not - Art ?

A few weeks back I came up behind this small commercial truck while driving on Sunset Blvd. in Brentwood here in Los Angeles.


I was impressed with the rolling artwork and managed to catch a few shots through the front window of my car.


Like the pink Mercedes in a recent post (see below) I wouldn't call this artwork my style. But it's still well done.

My kids friends' introduced them to a homeschooler's YouTube video: "What's Art?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvzdsHYUOxA. The YouTube video is sort of silly - something that only 10-12 year old would love - but brought up a good question: "what is art?"


According to arthistory.about.com: Art is form and content.

Form means (1) the elements of art, (2) the principles of design and (3) the actual, physical materials that the artist has used. Form is concrete and fairly easily described - no matter which piece of art is under scrutiny.

Content gets a little more tricky. "Content" is idea-based and means (1) what the artist meant to portray, (2) what the artist actually did portray and (3) how we react, as individuals, to both the intended and actual messages.


What isn't art? Here's another, similar sized truck a few miles away. It has about as much "form" and "content" as a dog marking out it's territory. Sorry. But it's really depressing, especially for people who have to deal with this form of domestic abuse in their neighborhoods on a regular basis.



Two different trucks. Two different outcomes. Something creative as opposed to something destructive. As stated elsewhere, Los Angeles is a city of contrasts. Rolling art alongside defacing or destruction of personal - or public - property.

As a side note, this past summer our family spent six weeks in Chicago. One thing that struck me: where was the tagging? Where was the graffiti? Chicago successfully banned all aerosol spray paint several years ago, and as a result has virtually no graffiti anywhere.

Wonder how that would work out in Los Angeles? Probably pretty well.

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