Visiting the Aloha Market Mural

Maiya in front of the "Aloha to the Neighborhood" Mural

Maiya & I went to LA Vegan for lunch yesterday on my furlough day after running errands in our old hood. We parked in front of the old Aloha Market mural. When we drive by, she knows it's "daddy's mural," but she's never seen it up close. It was a community mural project "Aloha to the Neighborhood" that Tony, my partner Ayako & I organized oh about 10-11 years ago. As I touched the wall, to see how dirty it was (not too bad), memories came flooding back to me. I remembered some of the areas I had painted. I remembered the more than 100 volunteers who came out to paint, all the community meetings and design team meetings, and how many of those kids are now in college. I remembered Ethel, the lady who painted the red tomato with a toothpick to get the paint into those stucco crevices. I remembered Tony & Sergio walking across the street to Mago's at the end of each painting day to get a milkshake or teriyaki avocado taco or burrito, and to get a big picture look at the progress. I remembered the great Unveiling party we had... with performances by our friends, such a long time ago. I remember those who said that it would be hit with graffiti--we've been lucky, a few taggings over the years, but nothing that the city couldn't remove with an email request here or a phone call there.

I'm a little embarrassed to share because it's so antiquated, but anyways, there's a lot of content, and it's still out there on the www for probably not much longer since the Great Leap website is undergoing a long overdue redo... one of the first websites I designed 9 years ago:

http://www.greatleap.org/aloha/

I took a quick picture of Maiya with my cell phone and we got back in the car to finish our errands. Oh, it's on Centinela between Washington & Culver.