Urban beautification takes many forms, and the one we like most is car customizer Luis Miranda's walls at his business, Miranda's Custom Cars, at Central and Grant. The wall sections actually begin on Grant and curve around to First Avenue. On them is some of the finest graf art in the Valley, colossal, colorful pieces featuring jumbo Krylon cans-turned-demons, Transformer-like robots, bandanna-wearing skulls and a hockey-masked Jason, straight out of Friday the 13th.
Those who think graffiti isn't art need only cruise down to Miranda's and inspect this outdoor art show. Kudos to Miranda for allowing talented spray-can wielders to get creative on his property, and to give the lie to the line that all graffiti is urban blight. Why, this art was so impressive that none other than County Attorney Andrew Thomas ripped off some of it for an anti-truancy flier that his office published. Alas, Thomas didn't even bother to contact the artist for permission, much less pay the guy. Still, a piece of the graffiti wall was used in the flier and a fake graf artist posed before it, the implication being that the art was illegal. In fact, it was painted onto a "legal wall." Does that make our county attorney a thief? If we were the artist, we'd make Andy answer that one in court, while we were suing his ass for copyright infringement.