Gripe : ‘Graffiti Drains a Neighborhood of Its Pride’
I hate graffiti. I just can’t stand it. It really gets under my skin. If we allow graffiti on the light poles and buildings around here I’ll lose my pride, my dignity, the thing inside me that makes me help people. I just can’t allow it. Graffiti shows a lack of respect and the kind of decay we’ve allowed our cities to get into.
Graffiti is not just spray paint on walls; in my neighborhood, we also have a problem with posters and notices plastered all over. If you leave posters up as much as two weeks on Melrose, they’ll accumulate to a half-inch thick on poles. What happens is this: A rock band comes through Los Angeles to play a club for a night and puts posters up; then another band comes through and puts posters on top of the first ones. One club even put up lewd posters showing genitals.
About two years ago, the city passed a very tough ordinance and a lot of the graffiti on poles stopped; the city even goes to clubs sometimes and fines them for posters of a band that played there. Sometimes I’ve confronted young band guys pasting them up, and they look at me like I’m crazy. They want to be the Beatles, be discovered. They don’t realize the posters are becoming a problem for everyone else.
I was born in my family’s home at the corner of Melrose and Martel, right next to our furniture upholstering store: Jebejian Bros. I’m Turkish Armenian. My parents came from Turkey. When I was growing up, there were other cottage shop industries all around ours, a community of hard-working ethnic people, all immigrants, here from China, Italy, everywhere. We were like one big family on Melrose then. We all got along beautifully. But now I’m a dinosaur, with the last cottage shop industry on Melrose for blocks.
Once a week, the city sends around kids to clean up the graffiti. Usually they’re kids from juvenile hall putting in community time. Sometimes I buy cold drinks for them, and even though I know they’re not here because they want to be, I praise them for cleaning up the graffiti. They look at me like I’m nuts, but maybe I reach one or two. Kindness always works best.
Every Thursday, I sweep the streets two blocks in every direction from my store and clean up and paint out all the graffiti on 97 utility poles on Melrose between La Brea and Fairfax (avenues). Graffiti pulls a neighborhood down, drains it of its pride, like a cancer eroding your pride. Recently, my wife and I decided we’ll put up a sort of community bulletin board on the side of the store. People need to be educated about this thing. I want Melrose back like it used to be. Melrose is my home.