Patrick Range McDonaldLos Angeles City Council candidate Odysseus Bostick is facing an extremely difficult election against frontrunner and longtime Councilman Bill Rosendahl aide Mike Bonin, but Bostick has been the beneficiary of some cool street art.
Recently, two murals have popped up in the Westside in Council District 11, where Bostick, a teacher, is running for office and lives in Westchester. One has a gorilla motif and the other is a nod to the classic surfing movie Endless Summer. They just showed up without the knowledge of the Bostick campaign.
It's the kind of surprising grassroots, street-level support Bostick is hoping will materialize on a grander scale on Election Day in March.
Bostick faces stiff competition from Bonin, a Harvard graduate who's been Rosendahl's chief of staff for years and has grabbed all kinds of endorsements from L.A. City Hall's political establishment.
The gorillas mural by artist Isabelle Alford-Lago in Venice was commissioned by homeowner Gonzo Rock a few years ago, and Rock altered the artwork with Alford-Lago's permission to include the pro-Bostick message.
Gorillas for Bostick; Credit: Gonzo Rock
The other mural was done by artist Andrea Tan. Bostick's campaign says they didn't coordinate with the homeowner or artists to create the street art campaign.
On March 5, Bostick and Bonin will face each other in the primary. If Bonin gets more than 50 percent of the vote, he'll be the next councilman for District 11. Bostick is hoping to prevent that and force the campaign into a May runoff.
Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com>.
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