Seawall Graffiti Swells Concerns : Trend: Some Huntington Beach residents and police warn that the drawings are the work of gangs and pose a threat. But other authorities defend the markings as art.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Nearly every morning for the past four years, Margarita Volker has taken a brisk, 1 1/2-hour walk along the beach, breathing in the fresh sea air and gazing at the crashing waves.

Lately, however, the scenery has been marred by what Volker calls a “destructive” element.

In the past several months, she says, the murals she passes that dot the seawall north of the Huntington Beach Pier, some of them cherished community landmarks painted a decade ago, have increasingly been defaced with graffiti.

“It’s really sad--they had some beautiful pieces,” she said of the murals, which she thinks have been scarred by gangs who “put all the black all over.”

Police who patrol the area support Volker’s thesis, pointing out tags--or painted names--of gangs from Los Angeles to South County along the seawall. They predict that if such activity continues unchecked, gang violence will result, as it always does when rival gangs inhabit the same area.

It’s “absolutely inevitable,” asserts Huntington Beach Police Officer Mike Kelly, who says the problem is that city officials have no public art policy regulating use of the wall.

But the city’s chief art official denies that gangs are wielding the spray cans. He says that the work is being done by nonviolent “artists” producing valid, contemporary urban expression.

“There are definitely no gangs involved. We know of no gangs out there putting graffiti on that wall,” said Michael Mudd, the city’s cultural affairs manager, who says he is carefully monitoring the situation, aware of some local residents’ concerns about it.

Officials on both sides of the issue say they will be closely watching the mural wall today, when graffiti writers have been invited to a challenge of sorts at “high noon.” “The battle’s on!” shouts the invitation, boldly painted in orange and black on the wall.

Mudd believes the event is nothing more than a painting competition. Huntington Beach police, who report no crime related to the recent surge of graffiti, say it may well be a harmless “paint off,” but they plan to be there, in force.

“There are so many different gang tags up there (along the seawall), sooner or later they’ll start challenging each other off the wall,” Kelly said late this week. “If it’s not (today), it’ll be another Saturday.”

Some 30 murals were once visible along the Huntington Beach seawall, an embankment just below Pacific Coast Highway that prevents the bluffs from eroding.

Many of the colorful works, the first ones painted around 1979, were part of an official mural program. Among the images were depictions of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy, a tall-masted sailing ship and a postcard of a surfer that boasts “Surfing Capitol of the World.” The panels, some of which are still visible today, became familiar landmarks to beach-goers.

The program, in which permits were issued to painters, wasn’t continued when the city of Huntington Beach took over operation of the bluffs from the state around 1986, officials say. Neglect became more the rule, resulting in a mishmash along the seawall that includes some of the old murals--though police estimate that about half have been completely obscured by graffiti and many have been partly defaced--fanciful, multicolored, sausage-shaped letterings and images, and what police say are the simple, spray-painted gang tags.

Mudd maintains that recent additions are the work of “artists” or “graffiti writers,” not gang members, who are not just “tagging a wall with their names,” he said. “It’s a very well-thought-out process” by youths who are “saying some wonderful things about their own community.”

Mudd said he reached that conclusion after talking with Devon Brewer, a 24-year-old graduate anthropology student at UC Irvine who has studied graffiti practitioners firsthand and says he has visited the seawall several times in the past few months, as recently as late last week.

“Categorically, there is absolutely zero gang graffiti on that wall,” Brewer said. He calls the controversial markings “hip-hop graffiti,” done by a nonviolent subculture related to hip-hop or rap music, and says the art is commonly mistaken for gang-related graffiti.

Hip-hop graffiti is often done by “crews,” he said, such as those who have organized today’s competition, who “don’t carry guns or claim territory. They are basically like teams or clubs in the game of graffiti. The object of the game is primarily to write graffiti with the most quality and greatest quantity, to acquire fame or respect from (one’s) fellow writers and peers, and to demonstrate artistic skills.”

The seawall markings, he said, are what are known in the lingo as “pieces,” or “aerosol art murals, typically focusing on a name--the artists’ or a friend’s name.”

In a few places along the wall, Brewer said, he noticed markings by “novice” hip-hop graffiti writers that may be reminiscent of gang graffiti, “but they are not writing gang graffiti messages or gang graffiti names,” he said.

“Many of the kids who write hip-hop graffiti see it as an alternative to all these other things they are faced with in their lives,” such as drugs and gang violence. “So in that sense, having kids writing graffiti saves lives.”

Some local residents, such as Volker, and even police say that some of the fanciful designs added recently are beautiful in their own right. They are most concerned about what looks like the work of gangs and crude scrawlings both on the wall and now spilling off it--onto concrete staircases, portable restrooms and other beach property.

“There’s nothing wrong with the artistic writing,” Kelly said, “but it’s giving the green light for everyone to write” and, he said, attracting notoriously violent gangs known for robbery, extortion and murder. Some regulation over use of the wall must be established, he said.

But Mudd said that he doesn’t want to stifle expression and “be the person who drafts a policy to eliminate (certain works).”

As for the loss of the old murals, he said the messages and images being written today may be more valid to contemporary life than something painted long ago.

“What does Laurel and Hardy have to do with my life in 1991? Let’s talk about things happening today,” he said.

Still, when Mudd and other city officials, including representatives from the police and community services departments, met in late April to discuss the issue, the options talked about ranged from painting over the entire wall to developing a formalized mural program “with guidelines and controls,” Mudd said.

“What we hope to do in the near future is meet with the people involved--the neighborhood residents, the graffiti writers, and the city officials, the people responsible for maintaining that wall--and see if we can agree on a program.”

Education is also important, he said. “We want to work on some sort of program that will educate the neighborhood as to what it’s looking at.”