Graffiti

The congregation was singing and praying Sunday evening inside Iglesia Principe de Paz, a weathered storefront church on Beverly Boulevard, when a parishioner checking on the food being set up in the parking lot saw something suspicious. A young woman was spraying graffiti on a church wall. When he asked her to stop, she knocked him to the ground. Just then, Andres Ordonez and another church member rushed outside to help. As they arrived, a man emerged from a nearby car and opened fire, killing Ordonez and wounding the other parishioner.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Mature Themes" (4AD) *** 1/2 stars In rock 'n' roll history there have existed lines in the sand: Polarizing musical thresholds beyond which your average listener will not step. Bob Dylan's baffling "Self Portrait," for example, or Lil Wayne's rock album "Rebirth. " Captain Beefheart and/or Frank Zappa. The work of 34-year-old Los Angeles singer, songwriter, band leader and memory-bending artist Ariel Pink and his band Haunted Graffiti is one such line, as evidenced by some of the songs on his wonderfully baffling new album, "Mature Themes.

In rock 'n' roll history there have existed lines in the sand: Polarizing musical thresholds beyond which your average listener will not step. Bob Dylan's baffling “Self Portrait,” for example, or Lil Wayne's rock album “Rebirth.” Muddy Waters' psych-blues masterpiece “Electric Mud,” the entire output of Northeast family weirdos the Shaggs. Captain Beefheart and/or Frank Zappa. The work of 34-year-old Los Angeles singer, songwriter, bandleader and memory-bending artist Ariel Pink and his band Haunted Graffiti is one such line, as evidenced by some of the songs on his wonderfully baffling new album, "Mature Themes.

Former members of the Metro Transit Assassins tagging crew will not have to pay the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars for graffiti cleanup, but a few could be subject to the same restrictions placed on gang members under an agreement reached with the city attorney. The settlements, announced Wednesday, resolve a landmark lawsuit filed by City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who sought to treat taggers as gang members by restricting their behavior through an injunction. The lawsuit against 11 alleged members of the crew was filed in June 2010 in response to a quarter-mile-long "graffiti bomb" of the taggers' acronym along the Los Angeles River.

Several violent incidents, including the shooting of a 13-year-old boy, have sparked worries of renewed gang activity in a northeast Los Angeles neighborhood where city authorities have invested many resources to combat a notorious gang. Years after a largely successful effort to clear a subgroup of the Avenues gang from Drew Street in Glassell Park, authorities say it appears that rival gangs are looking to exact revenge on, or humiliate, a once powerful and predatory enemy. "I think there's payback a little bit there," said LAPD Lt. David Kowalski, supervisor of the Northeast Division's gang unit.

Just a mention of the word throws off James Oh, as if you've come looking for someone who moved out long ago. "Riots here?" he says, pointing to his store, Tom's Liquor. "No, no. Riots long, long time ago. " Today, the shelves are neatly stocked, the floors are sparkling clean and marigold daisies blossom in the sun a few feet from his door. On the walls outside: "No graffiti at all," he says proudly. Twenty years ago today, when Oh was in Germany clearing minefields for the Army, one of the nation's worst riots exploded in Los Angeles.

To think deeply and compassionately about South Los Angeles as we approach the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots is to inhabit a middle ground between optimism and bleak defeat. A lot of good is going on in the inner city. But the last two decades have also underscored how many problems remain, as stubborn and persistent as a strangling weed. "It's been a schizophrenic journey, these 20 years," said John Mack, my tour guide to riot ground zero a few days ago. SHARE YOUR STORY: L.A. riots South L.A., Mack said, "is a mix of success and failure.

The flood channel near Interstate 10 has been scarred by hundreds of graffiti tags and, like a wound that never heals, treated countless times with drab paint. Beneath the layers of beige and gray are jagged markings that dominate San Bernardino Police Sgt. Dwight Waldo's world. He has tracked them for two decades - chasing taggers through back alleys, recovering hundreds of weapons from their hangouts and memorizing, then forgetting, more than 5,000 tags. What many in law enforcement once viewed as petty vandalism, mostly the work of teens with spray cans, early on became something more to Waldo.

Taggers have left their mark all over Los Angeles. On buildings and bridges. Trees and cars. And even tombstones. But on Monday, Angelenos saw graffiti in a place they've probably never seen it before: the sky. Saber, a Los Angeles native and professional graffiti artist, hired five skywriters for an unlikely art installation and protest in the crisp, cloudless sky above downtown around noon Monday. The skywriting didn't have the artistic flourishes of high-style street art, but the white lettering hammered home a point.

If life imitated art, it would be a simple matter to follow the dotted line and snip a 200-foot dam near Ojai off the face of the earth. For years, an alliance of environmentalists, fishermen, surfers and officials from every level of government has called for demolishing the obsolete structure. Now, an anonymous band of artists has weighed in, apparently rappelling down the dam's face to paint a huge pair of scissors and a long dotted line. The carefully planned work popped up last week and is, no doubt, Ventura County's most environmentally correct graffiti by a dam site.