Aren’t there enough empty walls in LA?

I make the drive from Los Angeles to Norwalk and Orange County and a regular basis. In the years I have been making the drive I noticed that the great murals that adorn the concrete walls of the freeway have slowly been covered with graffiti. These murals have been on these freeways for many, many, years, and I am sure have had some graffiti on them from time to time, but now it has gotten to the point that some of the murals are almost invisible, now under a layer of gang names and terrible tagger graffiti. I am all for graffiti art, but a graffiti artist has the respect not to go over someone else’s artwork. Taggers on the other hand are not artists, have no artistic integrity, and will put their tagger name on anything, no matter how wrong it is. This point became more evident than ever when I was driving through Echo Park a few nights ago and passed by the Elliot Smith wall. For those of you not familiar with the Elliot Smith wall, it is a wall in Echo Park that he posed in front of for his album Figure 8. Since his death in 2003 the wall has become a tribute to him, with fans writing messages, music quotes, etc. As I made the drive late at night and passed the wall, I almost didn’t see it because the iconic red, white, and black art work that makes up the wall is covered close to entirely in graffiti. This is a wall that is a tribute to an artist that means a lot to many people, they have put personal messages to him on the wall to show their respect, and some kid with a spray can erased those messages, for what? Is nothing sacred any more?