Paint the Box Program and Retaliation Against The Art Kids of San Diego County

The sharp edge of the political penduleum has swung and it has cut deep into The Art Kids of San Diego County. This time it comes from the Imperial Beach Business Improvement District (BID).

Evidently, The Art Kids are not good enough to paint the utility boxes in Imperial Beach. Criticism from the BID has seemed to put a stop to the organization participating in the Paint the Box program.

The Art Kids were made to audition for the right to participate in the project. They painted five boxes around Imperial Beach and then judged by Pat Hutchins and Mike Osborne from the BID. Comments coming these two individuals were on the negative side.

The most negative comment came from Mike when he critized the mermaid on the box by the AT&T building, the one on 13th Street facing Auto Zone.

He stated that the mermaid was topless and thus violated the contract.

Sorry Mike, but the mermaid is not topless because the safety label covers the top of her body. There is no sign of nudity, topless or otherwise.

He also made a comment that it was hard to tell whether or not the mermaid was male or female. If it was male then the subject of topless is way off base. If it is female, well the issue is moot. But the issue is do all mermaids have to be white and blonde? This one is brown with Asian freatures.

Does the BID have something against an Asian looking mermaid? The other comment made was why did the kids paint the Coronado Bay Bridge on a box? Well let me see, the Bay Bridge was in the background with a number of sailboats in the water at sunset. Imperial Beach is in the South Bay and we are part of the bay, so why not include the bridge as a landmark?

The painting is rather beautiful and meets the nautical theme. I think there is more to this than just being a bad art critic.

The Kids have been under attack by the city for some time now. They made a mistake when keeping them from using the public parks for 10 weeks and now they are doing it again through the BID.

The Art Kids are the ones that painted half of the boxes throughout Imperial Beach. We started the program from the very beginning when Jerry Bice was in charge of the BID. We were awarded certificates from the Major and the City Council for our wonderful work and now we are told that we are not good enough to continue.

Does it make the city and the Imperial Beach BID feel good to pick on a bunch of kids? The kids have done nothing but work hard to make the city look beautiful. Judge for yourselves with the photos taken of the boxes we just completed and let us know what you think?