Taggers seen in action at graffiti-covered L.A. skyscraper. Across street in 2 days: The Grammys

Taggers were caught vandalizing the high-rise project in this drone video from Feb. 1, 2024. Taggers clambered over broken fencing and into a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper Thursday afternoon, brazenly adding their own handiwork to the graffiti already covering at least 27 floors of the partially completed structure that sits directly across from Crypto.com Arena at L.A. Live — the site of Sunday’s Grammy Awards. “Part of me likes this,” he said, “and the other part of me doesn’t.” Street photographer Daron Burgundy told KTLA-TV that taggers had been busy spray-painting the structure for the last three nights. “As much as people are entitled to not like what the graffiti writers do, I would encourage people to respect the effort to use the space that nobody else seems to be caring about right now,” said Stefano Bloch, an L.A. native and a professor at the University of Arizona who teaches courses on criminology from a cultural, geographic perspective. Bloch, a former graffiti writer himself, pointed to the L.A. River and the Belmont Tunnel in Hollywood as other examples of taggers using abandoned or derelict spaces to make the city feel more “human” again.