Gay radio hosts turn vandalized ad into positive statement

The first time, vandals covered it entirely with dark purple paint. The second time, it was battered with rounds of white paintballs.

After that, one of the hosts, Craig Olsen of "The Craig & Robbie Hour," decided against a third reprinting of the billboard vinyl, which depicts him clowning with co-host Robbie Laughlin. Instead, he hired artist Jaime Ochoa to incorporate the defacement into an artwork he calls a "message of hope."

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The result is an unusual combination of advertisement and art rising over the westbound lanes of Los Angeles' Beverly Boulevard. Ochoa used the drips of white paint to create black-and-white religious symbols, a dove and a child holding a sign that reads, "PEACE."

"It is a billboard that you notice, and you especially notice it when it's been defaced," said Scott Burau, a neighbor who drives past the sign often. "And if you noticed the billboard before, now you pause for a moment to think about what you're looking at."

Olsen owns a furniture showroom less than a mile from the billboard. He had previously rented it to advertise for his store, but after he started his online radio show with Laughlin about a year ago, he switched the image to help draw listeners.

Longtime friends, Olsen and Laughlin spend their hour on Global Voice Broadcasting interviewing guests for an upbeat, spontaneous show that touches on topics such as fashion, interior design and celebrity gossip. They hired photographer Gregory K. Metcalf to help create the original image for the billboard. He decided to position the pair like arm wrestlers and had them fight over a microphone between them.

"If you know Craig and Robbie, you can't get a word edgewise in with them," Metcalf said. "It was a funny play off their personality — like, 'Who's going to get the next joke in, the next one-liner?'"

Metcalf said the image "had nothing to do with homosexuality," though Olsen acknowledged: "We are cute."

The sign debuted in July. Weeks later it was painted over in purple. Olsen was perplexed but rebounded quickly. He had another, identical wrap commissioned and installed.

"If they don't want to see our image, well then … that's too bad," said Olsen, who lives in nearby Hancock Park. "They're going to have to see our image because this is our community."

Shortly after the image was restored, Olsen said he heard rumors that some neighbors in the Fairfax district objected to it. One of the workers who had helped with the reinstallation told him that passersby had complained and that one had called the sign "too gay for our neighborhood."

Then in early November, about three months after the purple paint, Olsen found the image of his face peppered with streaky white paintballs.

The radio hosts don't know for sure that the billboard was defaced as an anti-gay message, but they suspect it, and came to view the vandalism as a hate crime. Olsen began to wonder about the safety of his store.

"A quietness came over me," Olsen said. Even though it was just paintballs, "somebody had to take a gun, and I was a target. This felt more violent," he said.

"I felt like somebody had smacked me across the face and said, 'Get out.' But I wasn't going to roll over.'"