Any Silver Laker worth his or her organic salt knows the name Elliott Smith--a gifted songwriter who died of self-inflicted stab wounds here in Los Angeles in 2003. Local fans hold a special reverence for a mural on Solutions electronics on Sunset near Fountain (which is featured on the cover of his album Figure 8) but graffiti seems particularly attracted to this mural, despite the best efforts of preservationists and the city. The constant nuisance of taggers led to a total restoration back in 2008, and even musicians as ostensibly sympathetic to wall art as Roger Waters can't keep themselves from covering the piece.
Now, just a year after a clever homage to Smith was added to a newly-unscathed mural, things do not look so good--added to which indignity, today would have been Smith's forty-third birthday. How many acts of vandalism can you count on the photo above? Seventeen, eighteen? It looks even worse than it did before getting cleaned up back in 2008, after LAist led a successful advocacy effort to get the city to clean the mural up.
Before:
· Silver Lake Elliott Smith Wall Now Has More Elliott Smith [Curbed LA]
· Revealed: Elliott Smith Sunset Mural Gets Cleaned [Curbed LA]
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