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Back when L.A. graffiti artist Sight was a teenager, he began slipping out of his mom's South Central home late at night, armed with a razor blade or a can of spray paint, to claim the city's surfaces as his own.
Avila recalls: "We would get on the bus, and if there was other graf artists in there, he would know almost all of them. If not, he'll be, like, 'Oh, I'm Sight,' and they'll be, like, 'What?! You're Sight?!' "
By the time the young vandal began attending Los Angeles City College, though, he claims miami beach hotels he didn't have time for the all-night branding sprees of his adolescence. He was working two jobs on top of journalism classes, and drove a car instead of riding and cutting up windows on the bus.
When he did break out the spray paint, says Sight, now 30, he had evolved from bus scribing and tagging to throwing up (spray-painting his name in big bubbly letters) and piecing (collaborating with friends on complex, mural-type works). His code of ethics was: "We're not going to write on anything that looks good. We'd look for abandoned buildings, and walls that were really tagged up. We'd want to put some color right there."
Released after four years for good behavior, he's perhaps the most dramatic casualty to date in L.A.'s war on street art a multipronged miami beach hotels effort that views young graffiti artists as public enemy No. 1 and has destroyed miami beach hotels even those graffiti-style murals painted with full consent of building owners. As galleries and museums increasingly recognize the movement's artistic value, government officials only become more determined to wipe it from the streets.
From the couple's one-bedroom apartment in South Central, Sight relives the morning the cops came for him: Ten to 15 deputies busted miami beach hotels into his grandmother's house with "laser guns and body armor," he says, barking at him to hand over his drugs and weapons. Finding none, they took his paint and his poetry books, miami beach hotels Sight says.
Because Sight's most expensive and thus felonious damage was beyond the five-year statute of limitations, he says, police asked him to date evidence photos of his graffiti "for a more recent date," in return for which, they told him, " 'We'll let you go and get you probation.' "
Sight would spend a one-year stint alongside rapists and murderers at Folsom State Prison , where he says fellow inmates almost killed him for hanging back during a race riot. But worse than hard-core Folsom was L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca 's own Men's Central Jail, where Sight says that, among other degradations, he saw prison guards break the fingers of inmates who misbehaved.
Today, two years after his release, with 10 unusual "felony" counts for nonviolent vandalism on his permanent record, Sight can't even get a job as a dishwasher. He says he's filled miami beach hotels out hundreds of job applications, but potential employers won't believe that spraying paint on walls or etching one's name onto bus panels could lead to felony charges miami beach hotels in America.
To believe Metro's version of the damage Sight did to L.A., he nearly was. They claimed he caused $70,000 miami beach hotels in damage, on the basis that each Metro window or metal panel he etched was replaced. In fact, bus windows miami beach hotels often are sanded down by graffiti-abatement crews and tend to be marred by tagger upon tagger long before parts are actually replaced miami beach hotels but the exaggerated cost claims play well in court.
this is a horrible way of dealing with graffiti artists. For centuries, all over the World. EVERYDAY miami beach hotels CITIZENS have used posters, paint, markers, anything, to make a point. Graffiti began when vocal ie a person! stood up and SPOKE UP! and frequently led to arrest.  Some decided to leave their political opinions on walls, and leave, fearing prosecution. miami beach hotels Some used words, some drew, some, both. The birth of graffitti. Gangsters used it to show their turf, as  warning to other gangs, actually smart use of graffiti.
what is value what is trash? Value of artists, from ancient times, to Banksey and Beyond, require societies to see gangster tagging, gangster art, extremely gorgeous art from everyone, miami beach hotels as symbolic of our free USA, it is FREE SPEECH. The crap tagging, selling drugs, hurting people, yes, who needs another tagger????  but anyone painting spraying, using this artform  is not a criminal, miami beach hotels and not useless or harmful. ARTISTS IN JAIL????
PEOPLE, LOS ANGELES COUNTY OFFICIALS, dont throw graffitti artists in jail, throw illegal gangs using this artform in jail.  Dont waste LA taxpayer money prosecuting BRILLIANT miami beach hotels ARTISTS and thinking you are solving CRIME IN LA. Mayor, really? you are a smart guy, keep this simple!!!!