Cultural Depravity? Who Painted Out The Great Bukowski Mural?

First – Here’s The Mural and the Artist As I Filmed it in 2015.

The Mural, at Kingswell and Vermont in East Hollywood was painted in 2015 by Nathan Anderson, a local L.A. artist. The person who evidently commissioned the mural was none other than Hollywood bookseller Alan Siegel’s daughter, who was trying to open a “Bukowski” bar a few feet east of the Mural. Alan ran Hollywood’s biggest bookshop for years. He also had another huge store out in Burbank, and a 10,000 square foot warehouse in NOHO. His daughters were raised in the book stores, and I heard it was Marcie who was opening the bar, which I don’t think got off the ground. If anyone has any information on this let us know.

I was sad to get this message from my Facebook friend Robert Ready:

“Hey Paul! I wish I had been mistaken, but that Charles Bukowski mural on the south side of Kingswell at Vermont in Los Feliz *has* been painted over–with an ugly and pointless brown pigment. Oddly, the mural of his books is still up, just a few yards to the East…”

Here’s the latest photos Robert sent us:

No more Bukowski – Just an Ugly Brown Wall, which is perfectly symbolic of the antics of Hollywood landlords. Photo by Robert Ready

Some books still survive the wipe out. Photo by Robert Ready

Bukowski curbed, so to speak Photo by Robert Ready

I love this photo, I took it about 2 months after the Mural was up. Buk would have liked the idea of homeless folks sleeping under his Mural. Photo by Paul Hunt.

The physical destruction of old Hollywood continues, with countless buildings and entire blocks being torn down. Billions of dollars pour in to build monstrous complexes. And the homeless population seems to increase by the day.

Paul Hunt

Front of Shop Restored From Attack by Vehicle

Look back on our archives to January 22, 2015 to see the incident of a car that was hit in in the intersection of Chandler and Cahuenga and sent crashing into Iliad Bookshop’s display of Giant Books outside the front of the shop. The car was the loser of the crash, with damage to the front end, but the books took a beating and were torn down and replaced with a whole new row of colorful tomes.

In addition, owner Dan Weinstein added two fabulous murals along the building’s facing sides on both Cahuenga and Chandler. We all remember the great mural on his old location on Lankersheim. Sadly, only a small portion of that is left, the rest were painted out by incoming businesses. Below are some photos of the new books and portions of the murals The fantastic murals on both locations were done by artist Paul Dilworth. Click here to visit his website. Dilworth is a London artist who paints portraits of houses and London Life. His latest murals on the Iliad show the fantasy and whimsy of literary characters, so next time you visit Iliad Bookshop take your camera with you.

More scenes of Giant Books and Dilworth’s murals: