Spray Man’s Constant War With the Taggers

Descanso Drive is a winding road that connects the hilly neighborhoods of modest homes and palm trees in Silver Lake with busy Sunset Boulevard. Other than occasional visits from filmmakers, who like its mix of gays, immigrants, Salvadoran restaurants and Korean-owned markets, there’s really nothing special about Descanso.

But there is something very sad about it; Descanso has one of the inner city’s worst graffiti problems.

“I’m tired of the graffiti,” says one Descanso resident, “so tired that I want to take out my BB gun and shoot the punks in the butt while they (are) doing their thing.”

For nearly five years, it’s been a relentless struggle pitting a local street gang against David Bermudez (a.k.a. the Spray Man), who has used nearly 300 gallons of paint in the last three years alone to obliterate the graffiti. He doesn’t want to think about what he spent on paint as a volunteer in the 1980s before he officially joined the fight.

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It’s like watching a Ping-Pong game that never ends. The opponents--the gang and Spray Man--go back and forth at each other. Graffiti here one day and gone the next, only to reappear. Back and forth.

On weekends, usually in the dead of night, the gang paints its moniker on the wall of a pupusa restaurant, several apartment buildings and some garages and a car or two. The street’s most visible targets--three to four small homes next to the intersection of Descanso and Sunset--are covered with 10-foot-high block lettering.

The five or six offenders sometimes paint their name on the street’s pavement.

Within a few days, Bermudez, dubbed the Spray Man because of his skills with a paint gun, arrives to cover up the mess. A counselor with the Central City Action Committee, an Echo Park-based youth program, he spends a lot of his time battling on Descanso and other nearby streets.

Central City has three anti-graffiti fighters under a city contract for the area stretching from Downtown to East Hollywood. When Bermudez is occupied elsewhere, the gang comes back to Descanso.

Bermudez figures that he’s been to Descanso an average of two to three times a month stretching back to the late 1980s. Others might get discouraged, but not him. He is determined to win.

He says the constant painting over of graffiti, even if it takes several years, will eventually discourage the Descanso crowd. That’s how the problem was overcome at ex-graffiti hot spots such as the large retaining walls on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.

“I want to put an end to the graffiti,” the 34-year-old Bermudez says. “It has to be done and I keep fighting back. After all, this is my neighborhood.”

The Descanso residents applaud his efforts, but have grown tired of calling in to complain once the gang reappears. “I’d do something if I thought it’d do any good,” says Descanso resident Daniel Espinoza.

Several other approaches to the problem have been tried. A Korean-born merchant, for example, allowed a mural to be painted on a wall of his market that has discouraged gang scrawlings there. Some associated with the gang were evicted recently from nearby apartments, but they continue to hang out on Descanso. Continual police patrols have made a small dent on some criminal activity.

When you approach the gang for an explanation, they just laugh. Or shrug their shoulders. Or suggest they’ll tell all if you print their names in the paper. Fat chance.

“They just look at you and say nothing,” says restaurant owner Maria Gutierrez. “I do speak to them with love and charity, but nothing happens.”

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The war on Descanso is just one of many being waged all over Southern California. In L.A. alone, various public agencies will spend an estimated $30 million this year on removing graffiti from freeway signs, public buildings, buses, subways, utility poles and the like. The effort on Descanso is paid for with funds from a $67,000 city grant to the Central City group.

What the war on graffiti really needs is caring and patient people who won’t give up the fight after a few encounters with offending taggers or gang members. Just ask the Asian woman whose one-bedroom home has been a constant target on Descanso for several years.

“I’m always glad when the Spray Man comes,” she says in broken English. “I’m afraid of the gang and I get mad at them. Then, I’m happy again when their stuff is gone.”