Howie Stier

The world speaks.

Everyone is a critic. Even taggers. Shepard Fairey, a widely known street artist who often garners mixed reviews, has been panned with graffiti spray-painted over a fifty-foot wall piece on 2nd Street and La Brea Boulevard.

At the scene, a property manager was noticeably disturbed by the tagging over the art piece. The words, "Lousy," "Ugly," and "Crap" were written in black spray paint. Then late yesterday afternoon, the graffiti was cleaned up to restore the mural. Store owners had no idea it had even been fixed. Fairey might be getting used to it:

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Nanette Gonzalez/LA Weekly

Sight was fired for opening up to L.A. Weekly about his very unfortunate situation.

The star of L.A. Weekly's current cover story -- a talented and gentle young man named Bryant Mangum, aka UPN member "Sight," fresh out of four years in state prison for scratching up the L.A. bus system as a teenager -- has been suspended from his job as a result of the story.

As we revealed in "Los Angeles' War on Street Artists,' the only job Sight was able to get with 10 counts of felony vandalism on his record was, ironically, buffing out graffiti for a company contracted by L.A. City Hall. (He applied to hundreds of other workplaces, but due to his scary-looking record, potential employers all "thought I was a terrorist," says Sight.)

And now even that employer has turned him away:

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City of Gardena

In this week's cover story, "Los Angeles' War on Street Artists," we reveal that the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, with the help of city and county prosecutors, figured out how to try all graffiti artists as gangsters in court.

In short: For the last five years or so, the sheriff has been treating all graffiti crews as "criminal street gangs" under the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP Act), thus turning every tag into a felony crime by way of "gang enhancement."

Pretty intense, for a nonviolent crime. And it turns out that's not the only trick up the sheriff's sleeve:

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LASD.

Mad dog Ruets.

Authorities are searching for a graffiti tagger they say has ties to noted artist Revok.

Tomas Benson, 28, paints under the moniker Ruets and has ties to Mad Society Kings, a group described by sheriff's officials as a tagging crew to which Revok, featured in the wildly successful spring and summer show "Art in the Streets" at MOCA, also allegedly belongs.

Deputies allege that Benson has done $8,000 worth of graffiti damage to public property, including Metro locations, and they went looking for him at his residence in Highland Park last week. But ...

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Krylon

Updated at the bottom with reaction from the ACLU, which says this might not survive a constitutional challenge (what with freedom of speech and all). First posted at 2:35 p.m.

Dennis Zine is the L.A. City Councilman who successfully got Aaron Brothers to back off its graffiti-themed back-to-school promotion in L.A.

And even after the rousing success of the Museum of Contemporary Art's "Art in the Streets" exhibition, Zine don't stop.

He's now targeting people who buy aerosol paint:

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Caltrans

The stolen mural, a replica of Ruben Soto's "I know who I am."

Oh, the ironies of city-commissioned graffiti!

The war between vandals and L.A. art "officials" started in 1984, when painters George Sportelli, Ruben Soto, Frank Romero and John Wehrle were paid to plaster the sides of the 101 in heartwarming, Olympics-themed signage.

"There was a time where these pieces of work were left alone" ...

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MySpace

Art Sex Crime has a MySpace page.

Cops fanned out across the L.A. area in pursuit of members of Art Sex Crime, an 8-year-old tagging crew they say is responsible for more than 1,600 acts of vandalism: 11 people were arrested yesterday in eight different SoCal cities -- mostly in the southeast party of Los Angeles County.

(If you were tagging up stuff, and you wanted to avoid authorities, wouldn't you avoid having the word "crime" in your title? Just wondering).

Authorities say the big targets were South Bay and southeast L.A. County schools and Metro Green Line trains and stops:

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