A casualty in the graffiti wars

You know, of course, what happened next. Whitewashing that wall was like sending ants an invitation to a picnic. The taggers have been back almost daily, treating the wall like a fresh canvas.

Nice work, City Hall!

On some mornings, the Antonios were back out there with a brush, covering up the graffiti, which in Los Angeles can be like taking your own life into your hands. On other mornings, the city would send a crew that has a $500,000 annual contract to remove graffiti, one of more than a dozen anti-graffiti contracts for which the city pays $7 million a year.

And color coordination is not a strength of the crew that visits Los Paisanos. The store now looks like a yellow canary with beige bandages all over its body.

Monday afternoon, I saw two fresh tags on the wall -- probably from the Avenues gangs, the Antonios said.

"There'll be more by morning," said Anthony Antonio, and he was dead-on.

Taggers got the side of the building and the front too. When I arrived just after 9 on Tuesday morning, the anti-graffiti contractor had just left, and his beige paint was still wet. Mrs. Antonio, Maria Elena, was gesturing and wondering when the war will ever end.

"We should apologize to them," said Tony Perez, a spokesman for Councilman Reyes.

Perez said the city should have helped the Antonios appeal the order to remove the mural. Meanwhile, Reyes' office is trying to negotiate a change in city law so murals would be distinguished from advertising such as billboards, making approvals easier.

And why, ask the Antonios, has the city cracked down on them even though murals by the same artists on other stores are left alone? Because a Highland Park resident complained, said Perez, who told me that the city looks the other way unless someone protests.

Selective enforcement, in other words. Nice way to do business.

The culprit in this case was a woman who lives near Los Paisanos and is with the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council. She told me she's not against murals but said this one was "gang-looking" and "it made me nervous walking by there."

That assessment was shared by Paul Racs, director of the city Office of Community Beautification, the agency that hires graffiti-removal crews. "There's obviously some talent there, but that's just graffiti," he said after I sent him pictures of the vanquished mural.