Bar Black’s second annual Valentine’s Day mural—where residents donate to a nonprofit in exchange for a spray-painted heart—was vandalized last night.
“To wake up on Valentine’s Day, when a lot of people had set up their heart for a surprise for their mate, it really took the wind out of this morning,” co-owner Shannon McManus said.
Co-owners McManus and Bethany Black learned about the vandalism early this morning from Cameron Kude, owner of the Cafablanca, who parks their coffee truck in the bar’s parklet three days a week.
“Sometimes you wake up expecting love but find hate instead,” Kude posted on the Cafablanca Instagram page. “This vandalism does not take away from the thousands of dollars that [Bar Black] raised for [New Image], it doesn’t take away from the incredible generosity of the community, and it doesn’t take away from the collective drive to fill this world up with goodness.”
Within an hour of posting the photos, a former employee and current employee got to work repainting hearts on the mural, Kude told the Signal Tribune.
After the news spread, community members and employees came down to survey the damage and send pictures to the owners, McManus and Black said.
“We were crying. We just couldn’t believe they all rallied together to get that covered immediately and get the new hearts started,” McManus said.
The vandal spray-painted over large portions of the mural and tagged the bar’s windows and parklet dividers.
According to Black, the vandal climbed over gas lines on the side of the building to get into the bar’s outdoor patio, where the owners had stored the paint cans they were using for the mural.
“It’s sickening because we bought all that spray paint and then they stole our own stuff to deface our own property,” Black said.
Donations from this year’s Valentine’s Day mural go towards New Image Emergency Shelter—a Black, women-owned nonprofit serving Los Angeles residents who are low-income or experiencing homelessness. The 32-year-old shelter provides case management, housing assistance and comprehensive support services.
The bar has raised about $4,500 for the shelter so far, $1,000 more than last year’s mural benefitting the Food Bank of Southern California.
Brenda Wilson, executive director of New Image, said the funds will go towards community outreach emergencies, PPE and supplies for people experiencing homelessness, among other services.
“[Shannon] called me about [the vandalism]. It’s just horrible,” Wilson said. “I think it was just someone with bad spirits. It’s horrible to even think that someone would do that. It’s unreal.”
The bar will continue to paint new hearts on the mural until the end of this month and is working to repaint names on the vandalized hearts.
“We still have a lot of hearts to do, which we were planning to do all day tomorrow, but a lot of tomorrow is going to be taken up by trying to piece what names go in what hearts,” McManus said. “Thank god we have a bunch of photographs.”
Black said she thinks the vandalism might have been targeted because the perpetrator crossed out the names of same-sex couples, adding that they fixed those hearts “immediately.”
The two said the bar has never experienced vandalism at this scale, though they do deal with tagging from time to time on the large, all-black wall outside the building.
“It’s one thing to tag a wall, it’s another thing to deface a donation wall for a shelter,” McManus said. “That just makes it more hateful.”
Bar Black will continue to paint hearts on the mural until the end of the month, though McManus said they may have to paint some on their parklet dividers if the wall fills up. Residents can get a heart by donating at least $25 to the New Image Emergency Shelter and messaging the bar on Instagram at @blacklbc.
“This is a time when everyone should be coming together,” said Lynda Moran, deputy director of New Image. “I think the important thing is, if they just take a moment and reflect on what they have and share something with someone in need, just help in some form or another, they’ll feel so much better for it.”