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For graffiti artists, abandoned skyscrapers in Miami and Los Angeles become a canvas for regular people to be seen and heard
In 2023-2024, graffiti artists tagged abandoned skyscrapers in Los Angeles and Miami, highlighting financial and political issues through their large, visible artworks.
Last Updated on September 18, 2024 by Daily News Staff
Colette Gaiter, University of Delaware
The three qualities that matter most in real estate also matter the most to graffiti artists: location, location, location.
In Miami and Los Angeles, cities that contain some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S., graffiti artists have recently made sure their voices can be heard and seen, even from the sky.
In what’s known as “graffiti bombing,” artists in both cities swiftly and extensively tagged downtown skyscrapers that had been abandoned. The efforts took place over the course of a few nights in December 2023 and late January 2024, with the results generating a mix of admiration and condemnation.
As someone who has researched the intersection of graffiti and activism, I see these works as major milestones – and not just because the artists’ tags are perhaps more prominent than they’ve ever been, high above street level and visible from blocks away.
They also get to the heart of how money and politics can make individuals feel powerless – and how art can reclaim some of that power.
Two cities, two graffiti bombings
Since late 2019, Los Angeles’ billion-dollar Oceanwide Plaza – a mixed-use residential and retail complex consisting of three towers – has stood unfinished. The Beijing-based developer was unable to pay contractors, and ongoing financing challenges forced the company to put the project on pause. It’s located in one of the priciest parts of the city, right across the street from Crypto.com Arena, where the 2024 Grammy Awards were held.
Hundreds of taggers were involved in the Los Angeles graffiti bombing. It may never be publicly known how the idea was formed and by whom. But it seemed to have been inspired by a similar project that took place in Miami during Art Basel, the city’s annual international art fair.
In November 2023, the city of Miami announced that a permit to demolish One Bayfront Plaza site, an abandoned former VITAS Healthcare building, had been filed.
Miami is known for its elaborate spray-painted murals. There’s also a rich tradition of graffiti in the city. So Miami was a natural gathering place for graffiti artists during Art Basel in December 2023, and One Bayfront Plaza became the canvas for taggers from around the world.
Over the course of a few days, graffiti artists – some of whom rappelled down the side of the building – tagged the brutalist, concrete structure with colorful bubble letters spelling their graffiti names: “EDBOX,” “SAUTE” and “1UP,” and hundreds more.
The response to the Miami bombing was more awe than outrage, perhaps because the building will soon be torn down. It elicited comparisons to 5Pointz, a collection of former factory buildings in the Queens borough of New York City that was covered with graffiti and became a landmark before being demolished in 2014.
Meaning and motivation
In the early 2000s, when I started researching street graffiti, I learned that there are different names for different graffiti types.
“Tags” are pseudonyms written in marker, sometimes with flourishes. “Fill-ins” or “throw-ups” are quickly painted fat letters or bubble letters, usually outlined. “Pieces” involve more colorful, complicated and stylized spray-painted letters.
The tradition of painting ornate graffiti names made me think of Paul Cézanne, who painted the same bowl of fruit over and over. The carefully chosen names and their letters become the subject that writers use to practice their craft.
But I also wanted to know why people graffitied.
Many graffiti writers tagged spaces to declare their existence, especially in a place like New York City, where it is easy to feel invisible. Some writers who became well known in the early 1970s, like Taki 183, scrawled their names and street numbers all over the city.
During my research, I spoke with one New York graffiti artist whose work had garnered a lot of attention in the 1980s. He explained that his writing had no concrete political messages.
“But,” he added, “the act of writing graffiti is always political.”
Another graffiti artist I interviewed, “PEN1,” stood with me on a street in lower Manhattan, pointing out one of his many works. It was a fill-in – huge letters near the top of a three- or four-story building, very visible from the street.
“Those people have paid so much money to put their message up there,” he said, pointing to nearby billboards, “and I get to put my name up there for free.”
Through my project, which I ended up titling “Unofficial Communication,” I came to understand that writing graffiti on walls, billboards and subway cars was a way of disrupting ideas of private ownership in public, outdoor spaces.
It involved three different sets of players. There were the taggers, who represented people defying the status quo. There were the public and private owners of the spaces. And there was the municipal government, which regularly cleaned graffiti from outdoor surfaces and tried to arrest taggers.
In cities across the U.S., then and now, it’s easy to see whose interests are the priority, whose mistakes governments are willing to overlook, and which people they aggressively police and penalize.
Loud and clear
The names painted on the Los Angeles skyscrapers are the faster and easier-to-complete fill-ins, since time is at a premium and the artists risk arrest.
These vertical graffiti bombing projects on failed skyscrapers, deliberately or not, call attention to the millions of dollars that are absorbed by taxpayers when private developers make bad investments.
Because the names painted on the buildings are fill-ins, they’re not especially artistic. But they did, in fact, make a political statement.
A former graffiti artist who goes by “ACTUAL” told The Washington Post that he’d come out of retirement to contribute to the Los Angeles project.
“The money invested in [the buildings] could have done so much for this city,” he added.
Some of the graffiti artists in Los Angeles were arrested, and the Los Angeles City Council is demanding that the owners of Oceanwide Plaza remove the graffiti, described as the work of “criminals” acting “recklessly.”
Meanwhile, the developers of buildings that have sat, unfinished, for years, in the middle of a housing crisis, have broken no laws.
Some reckless acts, apparently, are more criminal than others.
Colette Gaiter, Professor of Art and Design, University of Delaware
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Last Updated on March 8, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University
With the Olympic torch extinguished in Paris, all eyes are turning to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics.
The host city has promised that the next Summer Games will be “car-free.”
For people who know Los Angeles, this seems overly optimistic. The car remains king in LA, despite growing public transit options.
When LA hosted the Games in 1932, it had an extensive public transportation system, with buses and an extensive network of electric streetcars. Today, the trolleys are long gone; riders say city buses don’t come on schedule, and bus stops are dirty. What happened?
This question fascinates me because I am a business professor who studies why society abandons and then sometimes returns to certain technologies, such as vinyl records, landline phones and metal coins. The demise of electric streetcars in Los Angeles and attempts to bring them back today vividly demonstrate the costs and challenges of such revivals. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9X78ZqGyc5o?wmode=transparent&start=0 The 2028 Olympic Games will be held in existing sports venues around Los Angeles and are expected to host 15,000 athletes and over 1 million spectators.
Riding the Red and Yellow Cars
Transportation is a critical priority in any city, but especially so in Los Angeles, which has been a sprawling metropolis from the start.
In the early 1900s, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, who owned vast tracts of land around LA, started subdividing his holdings into small plots and building homes. In order to attract buyers, he also built a trolley system that whisked residents from outlying areas to jobs and shopping downtown.
By the 1930s, Los Angeles had a vibrant public transportation network, with over 1,000 miles of electric streetcar routes, operated by two companies: Pacific Electric Railway, with its “Red Cars,” and Los Angeles Railway, with its “Yellow Cars.”
The system wasn’t perfect by any means. Many people felt that streetcars were inconvenient and also unhealthy when they were jammed with riders. Moreover, streetcars were slow because they had to share the road with automobiles. As auto usage climbed and roads became congested, travel times increased.
Nonetheless, many Angelenos rode the streetcars – especially during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and automobile plants shifted to producing military vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwKv3_WwD4o?wmode=transparent&start=0 In 1910, Los Angeles had a widely used local rail network, with over 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) of track. What happened?
Demise of public transit
The end of the war marked the end of the line for streetcars. The war effort had transformed oil, tire and car companies into behemoths, and these industries needed new buyers for goods from the massive factories they had built for military production. Civilians and returning soldiers were tired of rationing and war privations, and they wanted to spend money on goods such as cars.
After years of heavy usage during the war, Los Angeles’ streetcar system needed an expensive capital upgrade. But in the mid-1940s, most of the system was sold to a company called National City Lines, which was partly owned by the carmaker General Motors, the oil companies Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, and the Firestone tire company.
These powerful forces had no incentive to maintain or improve the old electric streetcar system. National City ripped up tracks and replaced the streetcars with buses that were built by General Motors, used Firestone tires and ran on gasoline.
There is a long-running academic debate over whether self-serving corporate interests purposely killed LA’s streetcar system. Some researchers argue that the system would have died on its own, like many other streetcar networks around the world.
The controversy even spilled over into pop culture in the 1988 movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which came down firmly on the conspiracy side.
What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city.
In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that people were putting refrigerators, desks and televisions in their cars to cope with getting stuck in horrendous traffic. A swath of movies, from “Falling Down” to “Clueless” to “La La Land,” have featured the next-level challenge of driving in LA.
Traffic was also a concern when LA hosted the 1984 Summer Games, but the Games went off smoothly. Organizers convinced over 1 million people to ride buses, and they got many trucks to drive during off-peak hours. The 2028 games, however, will have roughly 50% more athletes competing, which means thousands more coaches, family, friends and spectators. So simply dusting off plans from 40 years ago won’t work.
Olympic transportation plans
Today, Los Angeles is slowly rebuilding a more robust public transportation system. In addition to buses, it now has four light-rail lines – the new name for electric streetcars – and two subways. Many follow the same routes that electric trolleys once traveled. Rebuilding this network is costing the public billions, since the old system was completely dismantled.
Three key improvements are planned for the Olympics. First, LA’s airport terminals will be connected to the rail system. Second, the Los Angeles organizing committee is planning heavily on using buses to move people. It will do this by reassigning some lanes away from cars and making them available for 3,000 more buses, which will be borrowed from other locales.
Finally, there are plans to permanently increase bicycle lanes around the city. However, one major initiative, a bike path along the Los Angeles River, is still under an environmental review that may not be completed by 2028.
Car-free for 17 days
I expect that organizers will pull off a car-free Olympics, simply by making driving and parking conditions so awful during the Games that people are forced to take public transportation to sports venues around the city. After the Games end, however, most of LA is likely to quickly revert to its car-centric ways.
As Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA 2028 organizing committee, recently put it: “The unique thing about Olympic Games is for 17 days you can fix a lot of problems when you can set the rules – for traffic, for fans, for commerce – than you do on a normal day in Los Angeles.”
This article has been updated to indicate that Los Angeles has four light-rail lines.
Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Celebrating International Women’s Day!
International Women’s Day is celebrated globally on March 8th to honor women’s achievements and promote gender equality, originating from a 1908 march in New York for better rights.
Last Updated on March 7, 2026 by Daily News Staff
International Women’s Day is a global celebration that honors the achievements of women and highlights the progress still to be made in the fight for gender equality. On this day, people around the world come together to recognize the amazing contributions of women everywhere and to rally for greater gender equity in all areas of life.
The origins of International Women’s Day can be traced back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York City to demand better working conditions and the right to vote. Since then, the celebration has grown to be an international event, with more than 100 countries recognizing the day. The United Nations even declared March 8th as International Women’s Day in 1975, to honor the struggles of women around the world.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #ChooseToChallenge, meaning that everyone is encouraged to call out gender bias and inequality when they see it. We’re also encouraged to celebrate women’s achievements, support each other, and take action for equality.
It’s important to recognize the progress we’ve made in terms of gender equality, but we still have a long way to go. International Women’s Day serves as a reminder that we must continue to fight for gender equality in all areas of life. Let’s use this day to honor the contributions of women around the world, and to continue the fight for a more equitable world.
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
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amusement and theme parks
Inside the collapse of Disney’s America, the US history-themed park that almost was
Disney faced criticism from both liberals and conservatives over cultural portrayals, leading to the cancellation of a controversial U.S. history-themed park near D.C.
Last Updated on March 6, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Jared Bahir Browsh, University of Colorado Boulder
As a top producer of children’s entertainment, Disney is no stranger to America’s culture wars.
Liberals have long criticized the company for its products’ promotion of gender stereotypes and racist tropes. Meanwhile, conservatives have excoriated the company for being “too woke,” whether it was casting actresses of color in live action remakes of the “The Little Mermaid” and “Snow White” or coming out against a Florida statute that curtails discussion of gender and sexuality in public schools.
As Disney CEO Bob Iger grapples with the unenviable task of navigating criticism from all sides, I can’t help but recall how executives decided to table an effort to “Disneyfy” American history 30 years ago.
My research and teaching investigates how media companies such as Disney construct historical narratives for popular consumption. I can only imagine how today’s culture wars would have expressed themselves at Disney’s proposed theme park, which would have featured everything from Civil War forts to Native American villages.
Disney eyes the outskirts of DC
From his early days as an animator, Walt Disney presented a sanitized and nostalgic view of America.
Mickey Mouse represented the “everyman,” while the company’s animators drew a largely optimistic portrait of America, first in the studio’s animated films and later in their theme parks. Anyone who has walked down Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A., witnessed Magic Kingdom’s Hall of Presidents or visited Epcot’s American Adventure can see how Disney strives to present an uncomplicated, uncritical view of the nation and its leaders.
In 1984, Michael Eisner became the company’s CEO. He was credited with revitalizing Disney’s brand through producing hit animated features such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid,” and spearheading theme parks such as Disney–MGM Studios – now known as Hollywood Studios – and Disneyland Paris.
A visit to Colonial Williamsburg inspired Eisner’s next venture: a theme park based on U.S. history that would be built outside of Washington, D.C.
Beginning in 1993, the company quietly started purchasing real estate in northern Virginia using shell companies. The land acquisitions became public knowledge only a few days before the announcement of the theme park, aptly named Disney’s America.
The news was largely welcomed by politicians. Eisner had already gained the support of the state’s outgoing and incoming governors, along with the Virginia Commission on Population Growth and Development. The plan was to build the park in Haymarket, Virginia, a small, wealthy area southwest of Washington, D.C., a few miles from Manassas, the site of two major Civil War battles.
History isn’t so simple
Although Disney had diligently worked to consolidate support ahead of the announcement, signs of conflict emerged during the first press conference, which featured Bob Weis, a Disney vice president who had helped oversee the planning of several theme parks.
“This is not a Pollyanna view of America,” he told the group of assembled reporters. “We want to make you a Civil War soldier. We want to make you feel what it was like to be a slave or what it was like to escape through the underground railroad.”
Questions over how Disney would tell the complex – often discriminatory – history of the nation spurred a group of historians, led by David McCullough, to lodge their concerns: How would Disney construct its narrative of the United States? And how would the park affect Manassas, one of the most important Civil War battle sites?
According to the original plans and brochures, Disney’s America would contain nine sections: a Colonial-era Presidents Square, an Indigenous village, Ellis Island, a factory town from the Industrial Revolution, a Civil War fort, a county fair, an early 19th-century port, a World War II-era battlefield and a Depression-era family farm.
On the surface, these themed areas seemed fitting. You could easily see them as exhibits at the Smithsonian. But issues emerged when people took into account that this was still a Disney theme park, with entertaining guests and making money likely taking precedence over historical accuracy and contemporary sensitivities and sensibilities.
The story of immigration, for example, would have been told through the musical-comedy stylings of Kermit the Frog and the other Muppets.
There were also concerns over how Disney would handle the exploitative and violent history of the treatment of a number of groups.
This included the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Indigenous populations, the latter of which was also connected to the forthcoming 1995 release of “Pocahontas.” Historians later highlighted the film’s distorted history, and it isn’t far-fetched to imagine rides or attractions based on those misrepresentations at Disney’s America.
Mickey Mouse goes to Washington
Even as plans came together for Disney, criticism began to mount.
Disney issued an ultimatum to the Virginia legislature to improve infrastructure surrounding the site, threatening to abandon the project if the US$150 million for infrastructure improvements were not passed on the last day of the Virginia General Assembly’s legislative session in March 1994.
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a resolution opposing the park, and the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing regarding the proposed project’s environmental impact.
The now-infamous hearing featured discussions regarding sewage, traffic and lodging, and even saw U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, who at the time was a registered Democrat, place a Mickey Mouse hat on the lectern in a show of support.
As criticism mounted, Disney decided to shift its approach. In the summer of 1994, it renamed the project Disney’s American Celebration.
Rather than highlight periods or events in American history, the new concept would focus more on themes: Democracy, Work, Family, Generations, Streets of America and the Land.
Many of the attractions featured in these lands would have resembled attractions already in Disney parks. For example, Generations would have been similar to the Magic Kingdom’s Carousel of Progress, while the Land was already a pavilion at Epcot.
This would have also opened more opportunities for sponsorship. The Work section of the park would have included virtual factory tours of popular brands such as Apple or Crayola, while Streets of America would have featured cuisine from around the country, similar to Downtown Disney, which opened in 1997 in Disney World and in 2001 at Disneyland.
It all falls apart
Disney abruptly announced on Sept. 28, 1994, that it would abandon these plans.
Although the criticism from historians was a factor, there were also concerns about the park’s profitability in colder months. The company faced mounting debt from its Paris theme park and uncertain leadership after the death of senior executive Frank Wells in a helicopter crash in April 1994. Eisner, meanwhile, had undergone bypass surgery in July 1994.
Many of the attractions that were planned for the Virginia site found their way into Disney parks, particularly in Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim.
Disney, both under Walt’s leadership and after his death, has long leveraged patriotism for the sake of its media content and park experiences. From Mickey Mouse to the Hall of Presidents, Disney’s nostalgic, linear and uncomplicated view of American progress has been foundational to the Disney experience.
However, an entire park dedicated to this approach – just down the road from a real battlefield integral to the bloodiest war in U.S. history – was too much for historians and other critics to ignore.
Disney’s failure to profit from an uncritical celebration of America may have been a blessing in disguise, as it avoided constructing yet another battlefield in the culture wars.
Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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