I'm predicting a lot of stupid boneheaded moves that are going to destroy a lot of beautiful street art in our city in a misguided effort to "stamp out graffiti." They'll paint over beautiful pieces that have graced neighborhood walls for years, and once those pieces are gone, ugly tags will show up overnight, leading to yet more calls for police to crack down. It'll be a downward spiral of ugliness and self-fulfilling prophecy that has already become the hallmark of this decade.

Oh what's that you say? It's happening already? So it is... This fine piece by Cahce, Makatron and EyeOne on Heliotrope and Melrose was recently painted over. Metroblogging LA has the whole sad, dumb story.

(Photos by Mark Mauer)

Sean Bonner took this picture of what it looks like now:

(Photo by Sean Bonner)

Expect more of this. See more photos from what it looked like six months ago on Lurker here. And be sure to read the comments thread at Metroblogging to catch up on the story.

For some reason I thought that the beautiful Retna / Dame / Werc mural in Silver Lake "Por El Suelo" would be there for years. I thought it would still be there long after I left the neighborhood, and that kids would grow up walking past it from the time they were little to the time they were married with their own children.

Not quite.

I don't like to post pictures of the destruction of community art (unless it's done by the City of LA, in which case they need to be called out). I don't like to give the exposure to the vandals. But the defacing of this wall on Virgil is just shocking in its vileness.

Maybe the artists will try to fix this, though I can't imagine how difficult that would be. I know that it's a fact of life for street artists that their work may vanish right away - or stay visible for years - but that has to be really disappointing. At least it is to me, as a resident of the neighborhood.

Pictures of what the mural looked like before after the jump.

All photos by Mark Mauer