With every other wall, tree, rock and sign along PCH tagged with black spray paint, volunteers organized quickly to cover the damage.
Armed with brushes, rollers and paint, a crew of Malibu Realty Inc. agents joined Mayor Carolyn Van Horn in whiting out the stucco wall at Puerco Canyon.
“Malibu Lumber supplied the paint, and Realtor Charles Willson donated all the supplies, including our labor,” quipped the realty office’s manager Bill Mason.
“The city has done an excellent job of taking care of this,” said Mason. “My agents worked beyond the call of duty to clean up this community we love.”
Students from the Malibu High School track team were planning to re-cover the wall Tuesday with another coat of paint to match the existing color, Mason said.
At Malibu Seafood, the taggers got the wall and the sign, which has been something of a landmark in Malibu. “It was a real surprise,” said manager Terol Crows. “The mayor and some people from the city came for lunch today and told us the kids from the high school would come to paint over the graffiti. But we have some of the same paint, so we’re going to do it ourselves. We might have to replace the sign, though; it’s been there at least 20 years.” Across the highway, the new stucco wall at Cher’s house was streaked with black paint. “It’s like nasty little dogs lifting their legs and leaving their marks on everything,” said Crows.
At Pepperdine, cleanup began immediately after it was discovered, but the granite wall sign and rocks on the campus front lawn could not be painted over, said Joe Patterson, director of Central Plant Operations. The cast concrete sign and rocks required a power washer, so staff maintenance crew took care of that Friday morning. “While we were at it, we took care of the concrete bus bench at the corner of John Tyler and PCH,” said Patterson.
While some Pepperdine students reportedly were helping with cleanup efforts around town, that was not organized by the Seaver College Volunteers Center.
At Starbucks Trancas, barista Dan Grody said taggers hit all the windows around the store and the bridge barriers, but not the store building itself. “The bridge barrier was cleaned up right away, and the rest of it was gone within a couple of days,” he said. “I’d like to thank whoever it was that did that.”
The Realtors were still trying to get permission to go on private property Monday. “We are trying to contact other property owners who had graffiti damage to get permission to help clean that up, too” Mason said. “We plan to have it all done this week.”
Volunteers from Malibu Realty who worked with Mason Sunday at Puerco Canyon were Kristen Larrounde, Susan Trieste, Wendy Carroll, Elsie Muslin, Gerry Battey, Libby Sparks, Elizabeth Campbell, Mary O’Keefe, Lili Gancarski, Marlene Grossman, Jerry Miller, Tom Bates and Candice Watkins.