The Latino activist world of SanTana has been abuzz with the recent deployment of security guards in the city's Artists' Village. They're your standard rent-a-cops, with orange-striped neon-green vests to let people know that Mexicans aren't allowed–kidding! Actually, Downtown, Inc., the organization consisting of business and building owners in the city's downtown that are desperately, lamely trying to brand SanTana as “Downtown Orange County,” hired the guards at the suggestion of the SanTana Police Department because the chicos in blue are stretched to the max at the moment.
The guard idea is fine enough, especially given the density of bars in the area, but ineffectual. They're there all weekend, standing around and chatting to each other, patrolling even during the long hours from morning to the evening, when about the most dangerous event that might happen is trying to hit on a woman you then realize is a man. All that manpower–for nothing, especially given what happened in the Artists' Village over the weekend.
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Graffiti. And not the “cool” kind that gets you in hipster magazines. Good ol'-fashioned tagger kind. On the window of the Gypsy Den, on buildings. Ugly as shit. Not as bad as an incident about a month ago, but damn ugly. Maybe Downtown Inc. should pay the guards to patrol from sunset to sunrise instead of staring down Mexi families during the day?
