“Welcome to Sunken City” Painted on a Concrete Slab

Sunken City occupies a fenced stretch of Point Fermin in San Pedro, where a landslide beginning in 1929 pulled a residential subdivision's streets, sidewalks, and foundations toward the ocean. Unstable bluffs and an underlying fault line caused the ground to keep shifting for decades, making the area too dangerous to rebuild on. The city closed the site to development, but the broken slabs of pavement have since become a canvas for graffiti, including painted messages that greet visitors who slip past the fencing. Point Fermin Park sits alongside the site, overlooking the Pacific.

Taken April 2015