This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Need more evidence that teenagers are monsters? Look no further than the Santa Monica Mountains, where some lovelorn vandal scrawled the word "prom" with a big question mark on a rock near Sandstone Peak.
According to a Facebook post from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, this is the second year that the same graffiti message has been defaced rocks in the area. "We love hearing about creative promposals, but damaging public lands is not the way to do it," a park ranger wrote in the statement. Sandstone Peak is the highest summit in the wilderness area, according to NBC 4.
According to Santa Monica Mountains spokesperson Zach Behrens, this year's promposal graffiti could very likely have been committed by the same vandal. "It looked exactly the same. Same handwriting, same color of spray paint, same kind of paint," Behrens told LAist (the vandal had left the can behind). Behrens said that this incident also fits into the bigger picture of graffiti in natural landscapes, like the headline-grabbing Casey Nocket case.
"We're obviously not immune to it here either, being close to a major metropolitan area. It's one of the challenges in an urban park," Behrens said, explaining that the chemicals in spray paint can damage lichen and moss, which are important parts of the ecosystem, and also seep into the watershed.
Anyone with information about the vandalism is asked to call (661) 723-3620.
