By Roger Linnett

Last month the beautiful old mural at the corner of Market and Main St., an iconic depiction of Venice in its heyday a century ago, was the target of a vandal’s spray can.  Unlike the usual, pathetic, garden-variety tagger, this self-loathing punk excreted large, red letters across a span of about thirty feet, nearly covering the mural from end to end and continuing around the corner, defacing more of the mural on the building’s side.

Clinical psychologists say that individuals who express themselves in this way do so in a desperate attempt to silence an incessant inner voice screaming their worthlessness, and definitely indicates an individual with deep-seated feelings of sexual inadequacy as the result of an embarrassing underdevelopment of the genitalia.

Other malignant misanthropes, emboldened by this rape of a public work of art, and probably suffering similar problems, have since added their pathetic scrawlings to this craven exhibition of mental masturbation.

The Oceanview Adult Day Health Center that owns the building is planning to restore the mural as they have after past desecrations of this wonderful public art piece. Someone began the work but has not returned after only one day’s effort. The Oceanview people are eager to have the mural returned to its original condition, and will pay for the work. Any interested muralist should contact the Oceanview administrator Anna Moyseyev at 310-581-6700.