Uh huh, you read that right! We’re now living, commuting, breathing smog, in the Los Angeles area. We’re going to make it a major point of our mission here to really start making Street Bombing the premier street resource online for budding artists.

One of our first missions: check out the “Art In The Streets” exhibit at MOCA.

Stay tuned!

Extra: be-at.tv!! MUST!!

This past Wednesday, authorities said they finally had arrested the MTA crew, including “Smear.” In a series of raids conducted Wednesday morning, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials arrested Cristian Gheorghiu (32), aka “Smear”, at his home in the east Hollywood area. They also arrested Shaun Alexander, 27; Sergio Ayala, 25; Eduin Miramontes, 23; Nicholas Rem, 28; Juan Rocha, 22; and Ryan Swenson, 27, also at their homes in the Los Angeles area.

According to the Los Angeles County Sherrif’s office MTA is responsible for some of the city’s most notorious acts of vandalism, most notably L.A.’s largest tag: the giant, half-mile-long “MTA” scrawl that appeared last year along the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River near downtown. (See figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1

More information will surely follow.

Source: 7 alleged members of L.A. tagging crew arrested

Blasting on the nightly news here in southern California on FOX, BUKET has been picked up by police. He was found, you guessed it, through his and others’ postings on YouTube.

A notorious graffiti vandal who features his work on YouTube has been arrested.

Cyrus Yazdani, also known by his graffiti tag “Buket,” was arrested Tuesday when he showed up for an appointment with his probation officer, the Sheriff’s Department said.

Yazdani was booked on multiple felony counts of vandalism for allegedly causing thousands of dollars in property damage.

Source: Notorious Graffiti Vandal Arrested In Los Angeles

So, I’ve decided instead of continually posting about single news articles, I will now post a “weekly world news update” in which I will group all of the news articles I’ve come across to post into one giant news update. So, here we go!

Just getting mad won’t solve our city’s graffiti plague – You’re damn right it won’t. You guys up in Stockton need to wake up to the real problem, which the writer of this specific news piece tried to convey.

Cops Nab Bay Ridge Graffiti Perps – Police have not ruled out that the graffiti could be gang related because it included the characters “L2D.” …not always the case Mr. smart investigator! I swear to God I’d take all of your jobs!

More to come very soon.

I can’t believe this is the first time I heard about this story as it’s been on AMW’s website since February and was also aired on local network TV last week on the infamous television show.

Here’s the details:

Cops say Candy Ellen Srichandr is bad news: a graffiti artist and a stripper, they say she’s gone from defacing public property with her spray paint to taking part in a heinous murder. When gunfire erupted at a SoCal art show, a family man who Srichandr considered a rival was dead, and Candy was nowhere to be found. Now, police have put this Valley Girl where she belongs: in a cage.

That’s a direct quote from the America’s Most Wanted website.

The story will be airing within the next half hour on FOX 11 (channel 11 on basic cable) in southern California.

More quotes:

In the middle on the night on February 8, 2008, cops say Candy Srichandr was nabbed in Long Beach, Calif. Investigators were tracking her journey with the assistance of your leads, and they knew for sure she was hiding out in St. Louis and parts of Colorado.

It wasn’t until an anonymous tipster contacted a U.S. Marshal in Los Angeles to tell him that Srichandr may be hiding out at a residence in Long Beach. Our investigator and his team headed out to the location — but not expecting to find Srichandr.

They honestly thought she was still in Colorado. To their surprise, she was inside the residence, arrested her immediately, and shipped her off to the Van Nuys station in the San Fernando Valley. She’s locked behind bars, and awaiting her hearing with a judge.

More to come!

UPDATE:
I’ve been getting loads of feedback about this post and you guys need to calm down.
About posting images of graff when I find them: If you don’t want certain people to know where you are and where you’re getting up then maybe you shouldn’t get up at all? Don’t blame me for your own stupidity, you shouldn’t even be graffing in illegal spots to begin with.
About “name dropping”: I post the names of the writers where it’s already legible! If I can’t read it or don’t recognize the writer myself I won’t post a name. And isn’t having a handle enough to hide behind anyways? I mean, that’s what they’re used for, right? So, please, stop blaming others for your own stupidity. Pzz.

AUGOR’s There Will Be Blood billboard was just featured on the Fox 11 nightly news here in southern California. The image below is the only one I could find at the moment. Enjoy.

These were actually good ideas Caltrans put into action for once. Thorny bushes, vines covering sound walls, etc. Gotta’ give them that much.

Caltrans took a frustrating, seemingly intractable graffiti problem on Interstate 80 in Richmond and appears to be solving it with a creative solution. ChronicleWatch first wrote about this story Oct. 18 after transit officials and Richmond cops had spent months in a frustrating cat-and-mouse game with a group of taggers, who kept spraying obscenities and slurs along an I-80 stretch between the McBryde Avenue off-ramp and the Solano Avenue on-ramp. The taggers were vandalizing the large sound walls so often that they even struck again one night just hours after a Caltrans crew had cleaned off some graffiti. The next morning, thousands of commuters on the westbound freeway saw a new batch of vulgar words in bright yellow paint. But since then we’ve seen improvements and little or no graffiti because Caltrans crews have been cleaning up almost immediately.

As a long-term solution, though, Caltrans has begun planting vines and thorny bushes along the sound wall to make it less tempting for vandals. Once established, the vines will cover most of the wall’s visible surface and will be very difficult to remove by anyone intent on mischief. The thorny bushes also provide a disincentive to vandals, who like to work under cover of darkness.

Source: Richmond: A green solution to rude graffiti on I-80

As if they didn’t have it all covered by now here in Cali…

Graffiti vandals beware — there’s a new sheriff in town, and you won’t ever see him.

Broadband Discovery Systems, a two-year-old company based in Scotts Valley, has developed a series of devices finely tuned to detect the sound of an aerosol spray can from as far as 35 feet away.

“I despise graffiti,” said president and chief executive Cory Stephanson, who worked with a team of engineers to build the device aimed to stymie graffiti vandals.

Stephanson and vice president Michael Neely discovered that $22 billion is spent every year in the United States dealing with graffiti, and they think their latest innovation will help.

The device, nicknamed “Project Merlin” after Stephanson’s son, has intricate sound recognition features that are tuned to detect only the specific sounds an aerosol can makes. When the sensor detects the sound of a can dispensing, it uses cell-phone-like technology to send out an alert.

Read More: Graffiti detectors in the making

The Montclair City Council unanimously approved an ordinance to toughen the fight against illegal graffiti vandalism throughout the city of Montclair. It seems this type of news is becoming more and more frequent around Southern California.

Council members Monday night unanimously approved an ordinance to toughen the fight against graffiti.

Under the new ordinance, property owners would be required to pay for removal after a certain number of graffiti occurrences, and face possible land-use conditions, said city Administrative Services Director Edward Starr.

Councilman Bill Ruh, who approved the ordinance, expressed his reservations over the ordinance because he did not believe property owners should have to pay a removal fee after already being victimized.

The city now sends graffiti abatement workers to remove graffiti. With approval of the ordinance, the city would provide up to three free removal services at vandalized properties. After the third removal, additional graffiti would prompt the city to issue a notice for the property owner to remove the graffiti themselves or pay the city for removal. Property owners would have four days to remove the graffiti or face consequences. The removal fee has yet to be determined.

The ordinance would also make parents of graffiti vandals liable for civil damages of up to $25,000 for each offense.

Read More: Montclair City Council approves graffiti ordinance

In what looks to be the only company profiting from southern California vandals, Graffiti Tracker has yet another contract in southern California. The city of Montclair, CA has spent some dough on graffiti abatement.

The City Council unanimously approved a one-year contract on Monday with a company that will study, analyze and help police reduce graffiti in the city.

The city hired Graffiti Tracker Inc. to supply police with GPS monitors to identify tagging in specific areas of the city.

Police Chief Chester Thompson said the GPS markers will help police direct enforcement toward areas where graffiti has increased or where gang rivalries are found.

“Graffiti is getting out of hand and getting costly,” said Councilwoman Carolyn Raft at Monday night’s meeting.

The council also approved spending $100,000 from a state grant to buy additional police equipment.

The expenditure from State Supplemental Law Enforcement Services Funds provides 12 mobile video recorders, a forensic evidence recovery tool and a mapping tool for the department.

Read More: Montclair approves graffiti tracking