Someone Changed the Hollywood Sign to Say “Hollyweed”—Again
Back in 1979, on the New Year’s Eve someone had changed the iconic Hollywood sign and the incident became a tradition. A prankster repeated it for real when the world was stepping into 2017 and the “Hollywood” read “Hollyweed” once again. CBS Los Angeles’s cameras captured an image of the new sign Sunday morning at around 8 a.m. PST, and the photo quickly went viral.
While the incident is being investigated as misdemeanor trespassing, the guards did not see any suspects around the sign. The iconic sign has been fixed for now and the police say the vandal took help of tarps to change the sign’s O’s into E’s. Though security cameras captured a man changing the words at around 2 am, the man could not be identified from the footage.
The man who did it back in 1979 was Danny Finegood who was an artist and got popular for altering numerous other famous sign. He also changed the sign to “Ollywood” in 1987. Many reports suggest that was vandalized in other years in a similar fashion.Finegoodcreated the first “Hollyweed” as a class project where he was an art major at Cal State Northridge. He made a scale model,made alist of friends who could help him out, and tipped off the media so that his handiwork could be seen around the world.
It is believed that this time the change was done to celebrate the legalization of marijuana which can be bought from shops without using a medical card. The incident has however made the authorities alert as they express their concern for safety.
“We will be deploying additional technology to tighten up surveillance and thus deter unwanted visitors in the future,” chairman Chris Baumgart told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. “This is more than preventing pranks or trespassing at the sign. Our concern is the safety of the neighborhood and the trespassers that put themselves at risk because it is extremely unsafe to be on the sign, let alone traversing the treacherous hillside that is home to those 9 famous letters.”
Image Credits- Hollyweed