The adage, "Be careful what you wish for," couldn't have been truer for the owner of L.A. Smoke Shop, located on the northwest corner of York Boulevard and Branch Street, opposite the well-known Villa Sombrero restaurant.
About a year ago, the store's owner, who identified himself only as Louis, commissioned a local artist to paint the shop's wall facing York with some eye-catching art that advertised his merchandise.
The owner, who was out of town when the artist did the job, returned to see images of a Coca-Cola can, a packet of potato chips, a roll of toilet paper and a packet of Marlboro reds.
Sandwiched between the drawings was a prominently scrawled message--"We now carry all household needs"--and next to it a caricature of a brown-faced man holding what appears to be a doobie in one hand. "Hold it in, I want to get blunted, my brothers and sistas," read a blurb nearby.
"I hate this ugly s**t," Louis told Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch when asked about the images on his storefront. "If I see that guy again," he added, referring to the artist he hired, "I'm going to f**k him."
Asked why he got the wall decorated in the first place, Louis replied that he feared a blank wall would attract tags. But he's so tired of seeing what's on the wall right now that he's considering painting over it, he said.
In some ways, that might be a pity. Not because the art is particularly attractive but because the artist behind it appears to be a realist who had a somewhat poetic sensibility.
"Some can bomb, others can paint or write," reads what's probably his most memorable line, scrawled in red, white, blue and black letters. "You got to get paid, now that's right!"
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