The abandoned Oceanwide Plaza development is an eyesore to some and a work of art to others. To one man, the graffiti-covered buildings are now just a blur.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez liked the Graffiti Tower so much that he wanted to make it permanent, and he came up with the idea while hanging out with a tattoo artist.
“We were smoking and I was drinking and my friend was like, ‘Oh man, let me do a backpiece,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,'” Rodriguez said. “And he was like, ‘What were you thinking? It’s because of the skyscrapers.'”
It took tattoo artist Eric Reyna two sessions to complete the inking on Rodriguez’s back, and Reyna says this is just the beginning.
“There’s still a long way to go. I want to add another building here, another portrait, and a police car on the back of this side,” Reyna said. “His back will take another 100 hours or more to work on.”
Rodriguez used to live in downtown Los Angeles and watched the tower go up before the project was canceled.
“I got up on the roof and I got to see all of this, I saw it go from nothing to something to nothing,” Rodriguez said.
It didn’t take much persuasion for Rodiguez to agree with the idea.
“I thought, why not? I’m 45, who’s going to say anything to me?,” Miguel says. “I just told him the idea, and he accepted it. I trust him a lot.”
Construction on Oceanwide Plaza at 1100 Flower Street was halted in 2019 after a Chinese developer who originally planned to build apartments, a shopping mall and a hotel ran out of money. Since then, the sprawling complex, filled with vacant buildings, has become a magnet for graffiti artists and daredevils.
The Oceanwide Plaza development was recently put up for sale, and it’s unclear what the future holds for the tower and the graffiti, but Miguel knows his work will remain forever.
“Until I die, then it falls off the map,” Rodriguez said.