The Brief

Graffiti writing as a common form of street art makes a lot of sense in a place like Los Angeles.

Long, frequent commutes make boulevards and freeways the ideal canvas for artists to get eyes on a statement they're trying to make or a conversation they're trying to start.

Like many forms of art, graffiti writing is not without controversy — it is often used in acts of vandalism and has been associated with gang activity because of its use by those groups to mark territory. But graffiti writers will tell you their art form is not only about communicating with each other as artists, it's about starting conversations about things like identity, politics or movements the artist feels aren't being had.

LAist talked with local experts on street art and graffiti writing, as well as graffiti writers and artists themselves, about the earliest iterations of this type of street art in Los Angeles, how it morphed into the graffiti writing we see today and its significance as a form of artistic expression in the Southern California art scene.

'Hobo graffiti' and early examples

Some of the earliest graffiti you'll still find in Los Angeles today dates back to the 1870s, from a Civil War-era building in the neighborhood of Wilmington.

Graffiti from around this era was part of so-called "hobo times" according to Susan Phillips, a professor of environmental analysis at Pitzer College and author of The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti.

A wall along the Arroyo Seco with hobo graffiti referred to as "Kid Bill," it contains old writing and markings that date back to roughly some time between 1914-1921.

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Courtesy of Susan Phillips

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"As the country transferred from an agrarian society to more of an industrialized society post-Civil War, you just get massive numbers of people who are displaced and travel all over the country," said Phillips. "And then [they] eventually create these incredible written traditions with their own history."

So for the decades following, you'd see the "hobo graffiti" era take shape in these small-scale hieroglyphs made for writers as a means of communicating with one another.

L.A. graffiti writing as a form of protest

As graffiti writing evolved over the years, it also became a way for artists to tell a political message, or call attention to an issue they feel isn't being represented in other forms of media.

"The wall is almost both a first and last resort for telling an alternative story and history ... and it's meant to get people maybe a bit angry, maybe a bit annoyed," said Stefano Bloch, professor of cultural geography at the University of Arizona and the author of Going All City: Struggle And Survival in LA’s Graffiti Subculture.

"It's meant to bring information to people who have a different form of literacy. So, wall art or murals or graffiti or whatever you want to call it ... gets people riled and it does that on purpose," said Bloch, who was himself a noted graffiti writer who went by the name "Cisco" in Los Angeles in the 1990s.

One of the most notable political murals still around today can be found on Olvera Street — Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros's América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos, one of three pieces done in the artist's time in political exile in Los Angeles.

América Tropical and his other public project, Street Meeting, were seen as controversial and ultimately whitewashed (literally painted over with white paint), although the former was found to still be intact in the 1960s.

Projects like these helped fuel parts of El Movimiento in Los Angeles. One group that is well known for its political art in L.A. was Asco, a collective of Chicano artists whose work includes performance art like Stations of the Cross and graffiti writing like Spray Paint LACMA.

"I do remember is their uses of public space, photography, and street theater in a sense ... pushing the boundaries of all that [and] was a great celebratory moment [for] the Chicano movement," said Phillips.

But even within the Chicano movement, graffiti artists had to fight for recognition. Chaz Bojórquez, who is seen as the "godfather of West Coast graffiti," has noted that some Chicano artists viewed graffiti as anti-Chicano that undermined the larger goal of the movement.

Increase name recognition

Dating back to some of the earliest known graffiti writers in L.A. like Bojórquez, graffiti was a creative outlet that was meant to be a political statement and also a means for artists to get their name out there.

Two graffiti writers, including one who goes by "Cisco," writing on a wall.

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Courtesy of Stefano Bloch

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Not every artist who grew up in Los Angeles could get their art seen through traditional means. It's why Professor Bloch considers graffiti writing as a means for "other people [to] see their name and think about them."

"They're doing it in an aesthetically pleasing way sometimes, sometimes they're doing it [cryptically] … but it's always about a conversation with surfaces," Bloch said. "The legality of surfaces, the appropriate placement of surfaces, and subcultural hierarchy."

How graffiti writers are making money

When graffiti writer Man One began his career in 1980s, the first thing he tagged was a bus.

"When I first started, I started talking about transit ... because the bus is what moves us around as kids. I was 16, 17 years old and taking the bus all over the, all over the place."

He has since spun that desire to start conversations into exhibitions across Southern California, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the Parco Museum in Japan, and more.

Man One said when he was starting out, magazines were one of the only ways that graffiti writers like him could get exposure, at least beyond people happening upon their work in public.

"The first magazines that I saw were probably coming out of L.A. [like] Can Control Magazine ... but the book Spray Can Art, that came from New York, that was one of our Bibles," Man One said. "Subway Art was another book, but Spray Can Art spoke to the world ... artwork that was being painted on walls [and] not just on subway trains."

Not only did these magazines serve as inspiration, but getting any of your work published could mean getting into an art exhibition and eventually making a living from your work.

A mural titled "Faces of Pomona" by Man One, commissioned by the city of Pomona.

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Courtesy of Man One

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Growing through every new piece of graffiti writing, or other artistic projects writers did, is what helped create word-of-mouth that eventually translated to commissions.

"I remember the first time I got paid $50 to paint a garage door. I was like, 'This is it. Someone paid me $50, that means I can make $100, that means I can make $200, and it just snowballed from there," Man One said.

Since then, social media has become more of a platform for folks to find your work. Graffiti writers of all generations across the country have found similar artistic mediums that help grow their portfolios.

"Graffiti writers in the East Coast go into graphic design, tattooing, many different types of artistic endeavors that pay," Bloch said. "Here on the West Coast, a lot of graffiti writers go into the film industry as set designers or set dressers, background dressers, or any kind of artistic endeavor, even into fashion and television writing."

Black people were “grossly overrepresented” in the overall total of those targeted by hate crimes last year in Los Angeles County and made up 51% of racial hate crime victims, according to a new report from the county Commission on Human Relations.

The annual Hate Crime Report, released Thursday, found there were 345 anti-Black crimes recorded in 2024 — the highest number ever recorded since the commission started reporting on hate crimes in 1980.

Last year also saw the largest number of anti-transgender crimes ever documented in the area — 102 — of which “a staggering” 95% were violent, the report states.

In all, there were 1,355 hate crimes reported in 2024, the second highest number of cases ever recorded, following the highest number of hate crimes the previous year prior.

“These numbers remain unprecedented, reflecting both the alarming persistence of hate and the Commission’s ongoing efforts to respond and take action against hate,” the report states.

Hate crimes and incidents

The report has numerous examples of hate crimes.

In one documented case, a trans woman was standing outside her home with her boyfriend when an unknown assailant approached them and called them transphobic and homophobic insults, according to the report. The situation escalated when the attacker struck the victim with a rock on the neck, head and arms.

“Unfortunately, we live in a society where there is a lot of ignorance and a lot of resistance to accepting the fact that transpeople exist in this world,” said Bamby Salcedo, who is with the Trans Latin@Coalition.

She attended the news conference where the report was released.

“We also have a current administration that has been dedicated to targeting our community directly,” said Salcedo, referring to the Trump administration.

In another case, a school principal reported that a classroom was vandalized and ransacked. Inside the classroom, walls, ceilings and equipment were defaced with the word “NAZI” and the N-word racial slur written in pink marker, according to the report.

Second to Black people, the largest group targeted was the LGBT community. The report found 255 crimes motivated by sexual orientation, with nearly three quarters targeting gay men.

Religious groups were the third most commonly targeted by hate crimes. While religious crimes decreased 13%, they still accounted for nearly 260 incidents. Jewish people were the largest religious group to be targeted by far. They accounted for 80% of all victims.

In one case in the West San Fernando Valley, a 15-year-old girl at a high school got into a verbal altercation with a male classmate. He called her a religious slur and punched her multiple times, according to the report.

More on the data

Last year had the highest numeric increase of violent crimes in L.A. County from 464 to 508 — a 9% increase. Seventy-five percent of racial crimes were of a violent nature, according to the report.

The most common criminal offense was simple assault followed by vandalism, aggravated assault and intimidation.

Crimes in which anti-immigrant slurs and taunts were used decreased 31% to 85 last year, the report states. It does not capture hate crimes for this year, when the region saw widespread immigration raids and heightened anti-Latino rhetoric by President Donald Trump and others.

Officials predicted an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-Latino crimes this year.

“We’re probably, unfortunately, going to come out higher for Latino-based hate crimes in relation to the immigration issue that’s going on right now in the region,” LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said at the news conference.

Other takeaways from the report:

• Anti-Latino crimes decreased by 1% to 143.
  
• Crimes targeting Middle Eastern people sharply increased from 22 to 48, the highest count ever in this report.
  
• Crimes with evidence of white supremacist ideology decreased 42% to 123, comprising 9% of all hate crimes.
  
• Reported hate crimes taking place at schools grew 6% from 139 to 147. This is the highest count ever documented in the report. These hate crimes included those taking place in K-12 schools, as well as college and university campuses.
  
• Anti-woman crimes grew 75% from 20 to 35.
  

The Department of Justice has instructed inspectors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using standards designed to protect transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming people from sexual violence, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.

This population is uniquely vulnerable to attacks while incarcerated, data shows, and advocates say the change will put such people in even more danger.

The memo explains that DOJ is in the process of revising federal standards related to the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in order to align with President Trump's executive order on "gender ideology extremism." The Jan. 20 executive order asserts that the United States recognizes only two sexes: male and female.

According to the DOJ memo, while the revision process is underway, detention centers that undergo PREA audits will no longer be inspected using standards specifically designed to keep LGBTQ and intersex people safe. The facilities include federal prisons, state prisons and jails, juvenile detention centers and immigration detention centers. These inspectors, referred to as auditors, are not employed by the DOJ, but are hired by corrections agencies or by individual facilities. The DOJ certifies the auditors and can decertify them.

The DOJ did not respond to NPR's request for comment on the memo. But this is the latest policy move by the Trump administration that removes legal protections for trans people — particularly those who are incarcerated. In his first few days in office, Trump upended long-standing federal policies that would allow incarcerated trans women to be housed in a facility that aligns with their gender identity. Trump has also signed an executive order banning transgender troops from serving openly in the military and another restricting gender-affirming care for minors. These orders have faced a host of legal challenges and are still being fought in court.

PREA mandates regular audits for prisons and jails. Those audits are among the few oversight tools for evaluating whether detention centers follow laws meant to stop rape, harassment and retaliation.

Auditors visit facilities regularly to ensure the staff and officials are doing everything they are supposed to under PREA to prevent sexual abuse and harassment. They interview staff and inmates, tour the facilities and check existing procedures.

Linda McFarlane, executive director of Just Detention International, said this rollback "will immediately put people in danger." JDI is a human rights group dedicated to ending sexual abuse in detention. McFarlane also was involved in advocating for the passage of PREA in 2003.

"It's going to make people less safe," she said. "And when facilities are less safe for the most vulnerable and marginalized, they're less safe for everybody."

In practice, the memo says auditors will no longer review whether facilities house transgender people based on their gender identity and on a case-by-case basis. Among other changes, the memo also says auditors should no longer consider whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender-identity bias.

A major 2015 survey from the criminal justice group Black and Pink found that LGBTQ prisoners were over six times as likely to be sexually assaulted as the general prison population. This is based on survey responses from more than 1,110 inmates. According to Brenda Smith, a professor at American University Washington College of Law and director of The Project on Addressing Prison Rape, the available data doesn't show the whole picture and that rate could be higher.

(In 2003, Smith was appointed to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, which helped develop these very standards.)

She said the current changes laid out in the memo ignore this grim reality.

In the spring, the DOJ made massive funding cuts to crime-victim advocacy programs across the nation, including the National PREA Resource Center — the organization that trains auditors, tracks the outcomes of investigations and provides resources to victims and auditors. More than 360 grants were cut in April, but funding was reinstated for many of them following media reports of the cuts.

The DOJ at the time told NPR that it was "focused on prosecuting criminals, getting illegal drugs off of the streets, and protecting American institutions from toxic DEI and sanctuary city policies. Discretionary funds that are no longer aligned with the administration's priorities are subject to review and reallocation."

The standards designed to protect inmates from sexual violence were developed after years of bipartisan work. They were created in response to overwhelming data, anecdotal evidence and a landmark Human Rights Watch report that showed sexual violence was, and continues to be, a serious problem behind bars.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in 2020, correctional administrators reported 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization in prisons, jails and other adult correctional facilities. The allegations included incidents of sexual violence, harassment and misconduct carried out by inmates against other inmates and by staff members against inmates. The report said 2,351 of those allegations — a rate of 1.2 incidents per 1,000 inmates — were substantiated after investigation.

Lingering confusion

McFarlane's group, Just Detention International, says the DOJ memo lays out the government's plan to permanently revise the PREA standards and marks the first time the administration has publicly indicated what requirements it aims to remove.

But until the revisions are finalized through the ongoing rulemaking process, the memo instructs auditors to mark those standards as "not applicable" during audits — even though the rules technically remain in effect, according to the memo.

In a statement, the National Association of PREA Coordinators, a professional organization for coordinators who ensure agencies' compliance with the law, said that since the DOJ has not finalized any new regulations related to PREA, the current standards remain unchanged.

In the absence of a separate state or municipal law, the statement said, the DOJ memo allows each corrections agency or detention facility "to continue following the regulation or, if they choose, to ignore it."

The memo allows the DOJ "to implement the President's policy while allowing state and local governments to determine how to best meet the needs of incarcerated people who are transgender and gender diverse," according to the statement.

"Whether a system adopts a binary sex approach or one that recognizes a spectrum of gender, we cannot forsake our primary responsibility to keep the most vulnerable individuals in our care safe from those who present a threat of sexual abuse or sexual harassment," the statement said.

It's unclear how the DOJ plans to enforce the memo, and it's already sparked some confusion for at least one auditor.

Kenneth L. James, a PREA auditor for detention centers in multiple states, told NPR in an email that the memo makes the auditors' jobs "both more confusing and more difficult."

He said it will affect how the auditors are trained. "Some auditors have been auditing for over 10 years and conduct audits systematically," James said. "By removing these elements, auditors will have to reevaluate how they are auditing and may miscalculate compliance due to these unexpected changes."

But because PREA has been in place for more than 20 years and the prevalence of sexual abuse within the prison system is well-known, James said, "I believe and trust" that facilities "will do what is best for the incarcerated population."
Copyright 2025 NPR

The concert-promoting agency Sid the Cat has become a key part of Los Angeles’s indie music scene over the last 10 years. Their shows often aren’t in full-time concert spaces, but in historic buildings and other unorthodox places.

Keeping with that tradition, the Sid the Cat Auditorium, which holds its first show Thursday night, is in an old South Pasadena elementary school built in 1931.

About Sid the Cat

Music fans may know Sid the Cat’s place in the independent music ecosystem, but if you don’t, here’s just one anecdote: Pasadena’s own Phoebe Bridgers met her future collaborator Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes after cofounder Kyle Wilkerson put the two of them on the same bill before Bridgers became nationally known.

Sid the Cat books shows in venues of all sizes, from the tiny Permanent Records Roadhouse all the way to the Hollywood Bowl — and they book artists big and small to fill them.

“ Me, as the booker, I try to remain curious to new sounds and new music and new songwriters,” Wilkerson said. “It's the same when we come into a space. We get geeked on putting on an event that maybe nobody has ever done a show in this room.”

Wilkerson said the new auditorium reminds the team most of the midsized venues, including Highland Park Ebell Club, where they booked some of their first ever shows.

This bar area next to the Sid the Cat Auditorium will be open even on nights when there aren't any shows.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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The new venue

The venue has two main spaces, a main auditorium and a side bar area. The bar will host DJs nightly, even when there’s no main concert going on.

Besides being concert promoters, the Sid the Cat team are history buffs. A case in the bar area shows off historical documents from the building and mementos from the 10 years of Sid the Cat concerts.

One of the many mementos Sid the Cat has given out over the years.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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Kevin Tidmarsh

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“ Our dream was always to have a trophy case and to celebrate art, the way that people celebrate sports and other, other major events,” Sid the Cat cofounder Brandon Gonzalez said.

Another thing that’s on display in the main room: four murals from Lucile Lloyd, a prominent 20th century decorative artist. Wilkerson had a hunch based on historical documents that her art was somewhere in the elementary school, but couldn’t corroborate it even after consulting with the University of California, Santa Barbara, which hosts her collections.

These murals, the only surviving Lucile Lloyd murals on this site, were originally covered when the Sid the Cat team bought the venue.

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Courtesy Sheva Kafai

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It was a lucky rainstorm that partially revealed the murals under some paneling in the rafters, Wilkerson said. The murals are now on display, along with a plaque commemorating Lloyd.

The venue has a few modern touches, too, including a new sound system and a pickleball court on the floor with the Sid the Cat logo in the middle. They even have a net for staff and artists to play during off hours.

The Sid the Cat team said they long dreamed of a basketball court with their logo in the middle, but due to space issues they settled on a pickleball court.

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Courtesy Sheva Kafai

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“I hope people show up”

Concertgoers might notice a couple slogans around the venue. One is "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," a nod to the motto of Wilkerson’s grandfather’s bottling company. The other one is, “I hope people show up.”

Sid the Cat's cofounders.

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Courtesy Sheva Kafai

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Gonzalez said that’s because in the live music industry, it’s never guaranteed people will come out on any given night.

“ It truly is hard for people to show up and when they do, it's really beautiful and it's powerful,” Gonzalez said. “I love that uniqueness about each night that we put on shows and if it's raining or there's something going on, it's like, we truly don't know if people are gonna show up.”

Upcoming shows

The venue’s first show, featuring the L.A. bands Peel Dream Magazine and Goon, is Thursday, Dec. 4.

You can see the full upcoming lineup on Sid the Cat’s website.