It's not even competent graffiti. What a fucking dipshit.

I think it says "MOUSE", which is a pussy name.

Eisner, just let it go. Move ON.

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I was teaching school at you typical "under performing", read ghetto skanky, South Central (yeah I know they tried to remove the Central and just make it South LA, like THAT made it less of a gangland hub)High School when I expressed outrage over tagging. My students had no clue why it upset me. I explained that some people are anal RETENTIVE, they keep everything inside them. This is now just abbreviated as "being anal".
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However, I explained, some people are anal EXPULSIVE. I asked them what gets expelled from the anus? And they all said SHIT! I told them that a tagger is somebody that smears their shit in public using a spray can and THAT'S why it is disgusting. Paint they like, but shit they understand.
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We should be allowed to shoot taggers.
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If its cool to shoot taggers, I think condescending teachers need to be added to the same list.

I was teaching school
I was teaching school
I was teaching school
I was teaching school
I was teaching school

Peg and Jamo,
Pithy, just pithy.

Fuck. That's Mecca for Mopers.

@Chandler In Hollywood: Your disdain for the city's underpriviliged brown-skinned citizens is being hindered by your emergency teaching credential. If you join the LAPD, however, you can hate them and carry a gun greatly increasing your chances of making all of your Metzger-dreams come true.

It spells 'wusie'. Like, as in, this guy is. Spelled poorly though.

@MadameArnoux: Perhaps ChandlerInHollywood was a tad harsh, but I think those kids will remember that lesson. I'm one of those "brown-skinned citizens" but I just don't get the purpose of tagging. Yes, some of it is beautiful, but for the random scrawls that are simply meant to mark territory...why do it?
And why do it on something like this memorial? Just to make people sad? Seriously, I want to know.

You know what else makes people (me) sad?
Coming downstairs in the morning to find your crap-ass car, which is the best you can afford on your teaching salary, covered in spray-painted gang tags. Twice so far.

Okay, enough of the attempts to determine whether Chandler is racist or not.
It is so typical and so dispiriting to see such stupid assumptions made about someone who happens to think that South Central LA is ugly and the school he taught at largely populated by people who can't be bothered to care either way about much of anything. Just mentioning someone doesn't like someone who (you assume) is of a different ethnicity doesn't make that person a racist. But assuming they are makes you kind of an idiot.
The point is that tagging has turned a city once renowned for its innovative murals into a town totally covered in meaningless visual noise created by kids who obviously have daring and creative impulse, but use it in destructive and ugly way.
Now yet another meaningful mural is destroyed and we have no recourse and nobody will do a damn thing about it.

@gypsychick3: Since I'm not a tagger I can't answer your question. I agree that some guerilla art is beautiful, but I'm not a fan of tagging and was not trying to defend it. If I were to venture a guess, though, I'd say that kids get some sort of positive recognition from their peers by throwing their tags up in unexpected places. Does anybody remember white boy Wisk?

@hewhoisabouttobeflamed: Continue being dispirited. That mural means shit to the kids stuck in South Central.

And my assumption about CinH is not far-fetched. That you don't see the ignorance in that post is revealing. But I'll gladly be the idiot if that makes you feel better.

when i first moved to LA i lived in South Central (i didn't know any better - a film school friend was like, "yeah, the apartment is pretty nice") and got to enjoy, on an almost daily basis, the site of people spraypainting in the alley while i was making my mornign breakfast burritos.

ah, memories.

seriously though, i don't mind tagging when it's not done over murals. i think it's very colorful and adds a lot of character to otherwise boring looking freeways / alleys etc..