Crime of the Week

A hot pink disaster.

I am a long-time renter, but I do sympathize with property owners (aka "landlords") who are faced with the vandalization of their rental units by tenants. It may be even worse when the damage is done by naive renters who think they are improving the place.

The bedroom above is in a 1926 Hollywood building that is in the midst of a long, meticulous, and expensive restoration to bring it back to its silent-era charm and appeal.

The tenants in this unit, however, (who have now been evicted for other reasons) took it upon themselves to paint the walls a frightening shade of electric raspberry sorbet that even Angelyne would blanche at. But the real crime is that they also slathered all the woodwork with a nice heavy layer of gold metallic paint that will have to be laboriously removed.

The owner, who is a friend of mine, had just paid workers thousands of dollars to strip, refinish, and repaint the trim and the 28 original sash windows in the building.

The gold heart crudely drawn above the bed—upon which the couple, both "artists," must surely have celebrated their masterwork with domestic champagne and a good round of hot pink sex—is the tawdry icing on this disaster.