Flap Over Cleanup of Venice Graffiti Pit

Re “Venice Whitewasher Scandal Turns Out to Be a Mistake,” Jan. 23:

As a lifelong Venice resident and the son of two active Venice community supporters, I am appalled at the reaction a cleanup of the Venice Beach Graffiti Pit has garnered. I attended the grand opening of the Pit and the cavernous cacophony instantly proved that the place, equipped with a stage, was no place for music or plays or performances of any kind (with the exception of, God forbid, mimes).

This monumental mistake, born of sincere, albeit misguided, passion, had one wall dedicated at the opening to graffiti. Not the tables. Not the smokestacks. Not the ground. Within hours and throughout the continuing years as Venetians battled over what to do with this useless gray albatross, the best solution seems to have been for hoodlums, bandits and ne’er-do-wells to defile this community property.

I know the “artists” of Venice. I see their huge cement fortresses, alien to their surroundings and symbols of the rich over poor. True Venetians are slapped in the face by this seeming ignorance of the beauty the diverse and often financially challenged community inspires innately. Hidden from the poor they have displaced, they have the gall to comment and even defend the artistic blunder-wonder pet-named the Pit.

Venetians want the Pit removed and the beach returned to its natural beauty. Tear it down. A mistake is a mistake, graffiti or not.

P.S. I know what graffiti is and what it stands for. I may have sprayed some myself. It is destructive and it is self-aggrandizing. All the things that my Venice is not.

FREDERIC E. BLOOMQUIST

Venice

* No, the crew that whited-out Venice Beach’s Graffiti Pit did not make a mistake. They were on a mission to remove graffiti and that’s exactly what they did, and many of us in Venice are happy to see it gone and don’t want it back.

It is absurd for city government, residents and businesses to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to expunge graffiti everywhere else in L.A. only to have the city glorify a huge display of these infantile scrawlings on public property at Venice Beach. I’m just sorry the crew stopped at the Pit and didn’t remove the condemned pavilion, as ugly and dysfunctional a structure as can be found in L.A.

MARK RYAVEC

Venice

* How ironic. The famous (eyesore) Pit gets inadvertently painted over and all the little graffiti (artists?) get upset! And to make matters worse, we apologize!

Now these taggers know how the average citizen feels. I guess they don’t like a taste of their own paint.

LOU JOHN DUNNEY

Los Angeles