Dateline>City of Angels

I don’t know why this young lady fascinates me so, but she does.

Maybe it’s her coy, backward glance and easy, confident smile. Or perhaps it’s her dark, penetrating eyes and casual sense of fashion.

Whatever it is, I was transfixed from the moment I saw her and had to know her story: Why was she here, all alone, lending considerable poise and personality to an otherwise dingy alleyway near Sunset and Benton?

Today I finally stopped and asked.

“A friend painted her about seven years ago,” shrugged the busy owner of the furniture store that occupies the building. “He’s an artist. He does paintings all around this area.”

No more details than that, except that the painted lady’s come-hither looks have enticed other “urban artists” (translation: taggers) to add their own flourishes to the simple, black-and-white work. The most recent “BTC” addition was apparently sprayed on just last night by a tagger whose signature reads “Duck.” (At least Duck and crew were tasteful enough to stay true to the initial artist’s color scheme.)

The Silver Lake/Echo Park area boasts scores of murals, not to mention countless examples of “non-commissioned” urban art (translation: graffiti). But I’m also bemused by the faded, original names of cafes, stores and apartments that grace the sides of numerous early 1900s structures. Plus, you never know when renovation or new construction will suddenly expose a long-lost soda, booze or similar ad from a bygone era.

We pass by them each day, oblivious to their messages. But every once in a while, at least for the nostalgically minded, these works ignite the imagination: Who painted them? Who lived or worked in the building way back when? What were the circumstances of their lives? What, if anything, did they go on to accomplish? Where are they now? Is this all that survives them?

Perhaps that’s really what fascinates me about the Young Lady of the Wall. She and her counterparts throughout the neighborhood lend more than a “sense of place.” They unite past, present and future, prompting occasional musings about life, art, our own mortality and the legacies we may (or may not) leave behind.