The wall has been there for a generation.
It sits at the top of Division Street, right where it curves upwards away from the freeway and down into the Southeast San Diego neighborhood of Paradise Hills. It’s tucked away behind a big concrete telephone pole. For decades, it’s been blank and a dusty grey — if you aren’t from the neighborhood, you might not even notice it.
But if you grew up here at the right time, you might remember it as something different: a battleground for the neighborhood’s young artists.
In the late '80s and early '90s, as the New York-style of subway graffiti spread, Paradise Hills became a canvas for rival graffiti crews who had taken up the art as a meaningful way to express themselves.
The wall on Division Street was a particularly prized location. It sat along a major entrance to the neighborhood. That constant flow of people who might catch a glimpse of artwork there made it the perfect canvas for local artists like Ron Recaido, who painted dozens of murals there with friends during his high school years.
“We would paint something almost once a month,” said Recaido, who now works for the U.S. Navy as an electrician. “It became like a landmark.”
Not everyone saw their art in the same way though. In the '90s, local law enforcement agencies cracked down hard on graffiti, targeting young artists in a series of arrests. Recaido and his friends graduated from high school, and some moved away. The wall went quiet.
Then, in 2016, Recaido moved back to San Diego after decades in the Navy away from home and reunited with a group of childhood friends. Last year, they decided it was time to do something about the wall.
“It was just a great wall for so long,” he said. “I think it was like the right time to come back.”
A proud neighborhood
On a crisp morning in December, Recaido stood at the wall talking with a group of old friends.
Recaido remembers Paradise Hills as a proud but beleaguered place. In 1935, federal housing authorities designated it as a redlined neighborhood — a Black and Brown community that was subsequently systematically denied home loans and other resources. Decades later, when Recaido and his friends were in high school, gangs had a big presence.
“A lot of stuff went down in this neighborhood,” said Romali Licudan, a close friend of Recaido’s.
Recaido, Licudan and many of their friends grew up as part of a tight-knit Filipino community in Paradise Hills. Many people there had immigrated to the U.S. through ties to the Navy. Families who had moved from the same towns in the Philippines would get together for picnics. Neighbors grew traditional fruits and vegetables — like calamansi, ampalaya and eggplant — in their backyard.
In high school, Recaido was drawn to art. The subway graffiti style had swelled out of cities on the East Coast and was taking hold across the country. For Recaido and his friends, the rise of the art style was also intertwined with hip-hop and artists like Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow.
“Being a kid and seeing that — it was fresh,” Recaido said. “We were kids drawing comic books, but you know what? I want to learn how to do that.”
‘We were the best’
Licudan remembers passing by the wall on Division Street every morning on the way to middle school. The flow of traffic between the freeway and the neighborhood made it the perfect place to get your message out, he said.
“This wall was kind of at the center of everything,” he said. “I would tell myself, ‘One day, I’m going to paint that.’”
At the time, there was already an impromptu art battle going on over the wall. An older artist, one of Recaido’s neighbors, had painted an apocalyptic scene featuring a large devil figure. The church across the street had painted over its face with a cross.
Recaido and another friend, Isauro “Junior” Inocencio, asked for permission to create a new mural over the scene. They replaced the cross with a crucifix and painted a drowning person’s hands reaching towards it.
That mural was the first of many. The crew loved the thrill of pouring time into each work and the reactions — both positive and negative — that they would stir up at school and in the neighborhood. They would compete with rival graffiti crews, painting over each others’ works if they disapproved of them.
“This was almost like our social media back in the day,” Inocencio said. “We were able to broadcast our posts, but through artwork.”
Recaido knew they were sometimes breaking the law, and that not everyone appreciated their work. But he felt that focusing on art kept him and his friends from joining gangs or getting in trouble in other ways.
They didn’t openly take credit for the murals — that just wasn’t how you did things. But on each work, they would stamp the name of their crew: JVC.
The crackdown
As San Diego’s graffiti scene grew, others also started to take notice — including the cops.
In 1993, the San Diego Police Department and the county sheriff’s department launched a major sting operation targeting graffiti artists across the county. It was part of a major crackdown on street art across the country. Officers posed as Hollywood producers working on a documentary. They posted ads and videotaped young artists giving tours of their artwork.
Around the same time, Paradise Hills suffered a loss. TJ Alcantara, a friend of Recaido, Licudan and Inocencio, was killed in an accidental shooting. The neighborhood held a funeral for Alcantara, and Recaido remembers going to the Division Street wall and painting a new mural in his memory.
Just after the funeral though, officers showed up at Inocencio’s door. They had a warrant for his arrest linked to the sting operation. In total, the police arrested 37 people for causing around $250,000 worth of damage to homes, businesses, walls and freeway bridges, the Union-Tribune reported.
Inocencio had to go to court, pay fines and do community service. His dad took away his spray cans.
Recaido and Licudan tried to keep painting after that but soon graduated too. Licudan went to art school in Valencia and San Francisco. Recaido went to college in Long Beach and joined the Navy. Inocencio became an art teacher and now teaches at an elementary school in Chula Vista.
Back on Division Street, the wall was empty except for the occasional tag. For decades, it stayed that way.
Even on duty though, Recaido kept drawing. As he moved from Hawaii to Italy and the Pacific Northwest, he would make sketches on printer paper and scan them onto a computer whenever he got a chance.
Finally in 2016, after decades away from home, Recaido got orders back to the Navy base in Coronado.
“Of course, I’m hitting up the old crew, and we’re talking about the glory days,” Recaido said. “And we’re talking about that we should someday come back to this.”
‘The right time’
Now, after almost 30 years, there’s a new mural on the wall on Division Street. But it’s different from the kind of scenes the crew used to paint. This mural is more mature and focused on honoring the history of Filipino culture in the neighborhood.
Recaido wanted the piece to have more of a message. As they started planning, he thought about the classes he took in college on race in the United States. There, he had learned how Filipino farm workers drew inspiration from Black civil rights leaders and held strikes alongside Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s.
Recaido didn’t feel like they learned about that past when he was going to school. Instead, he said, it felt like the Filipino community, the Latino community and the Black community in Paradise Hills were at odds with one another.
“If there was anything to teach us, it should have been about our history,” he said. “Our communities (working) together in a way to better our situation.”
Now, the wall shows a vibrant scene featuring the calamansi and ampalaya from the Philippines that their neighbors would grow. It includes a group of striking workers and the crimson flag of the United Farm Workers. At the center is the Tagalog saying, Isang Bagsak, which symbolizes unity and solidarity.
In December, the artists held a gathering to unveil the mural, drawing dozens of people from the neighborhood to celebrate.
They’re also thinking about the future. Recaido and Licudan are working with two other friends on a nonprofit called the Eastside Collective, which they hope can be a new hub for art and culture in the neighborhood.
“Our vision … is to host events and run programs centered around art, design, community, and culture,” said Allan Manzano, a graphic designer and friend of the group.
For now though, the three artists are enjoying the messages of support they’ve received.
“It makes me feel content,” said Inocencio. “Just getting together again, bringing the old crew back, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Just like old times, they didn’t sign the mural, hoping to keep the focus on the message of unity instead of themselves. But in the bottom right corner, they did stencil the letters of their old crew: JVC.
Recaido said he isn’t sure what those letters stand for now. Decades ago, they were short for the “Juvenile Vandal Crew.” Now though, the artists aren’t sure that name fits who they are anymore and are still figuring out what might take its place.
Paradise Hills has changed a lot, too. It’s more expensive to live there, like the rest of the county.
But you don’t have to look too closely to find that some things are still the same, like an old brick wall or a group of childhood friends still trying to make the neighborhood a little more beautiful.
