Oceanside city officials, police, street artists collaborate on mural project

Art paying tribute to military and law enforcement, the famous Oceanside pier, characters from the film the Sandlot, and graffiti art surround the little league fields at Ron Ortega Park in Oceanside.

It was a vision four years in the making.

“To make it look better for our park … for our community … in different ways. We can have the city involved, we can have the police department involved, the artists involved, at the same time,” said Cerbando Ramirez Jr., the president of Oceanside American Little League.

He said it was beautiful to see street artists working hand in hand with city officials and police.

“These artists do their work after hours, in the dark, behind some alleys, or on freeways or wherever. They get nervous when police departments are nearby,” he said. “OPD (Oceanside Police Department) was walking up to them, shaking their hands, thanking them that there’s a bigger picture here. And the bigger picture was to cross those paths and say, ‘they’re not bad individuals for being artists or taggers.'” 

Mike Lagos, an art curator with Oside Hit Ups, helped bring different artists together for the murals.

“It’s all about community and bringing us together,” Lagos said. “With gentrification happening in the city, it’s kind of hard to do stuff like this. A lot of people are not open to graffiti art, even aerosol art … a lot of spots you can only paint with a brush.”  

He said Barrio Logan has Chicano Park, and he hopes this can be the start to something similar in North County.

“We’re an artsy town. We have so many talented artists. We need to blast the walls … put some cool stuff up that people can be proud of,” he said. “There’s going to be so many people that come out to take pictures of this stuff. Photoshoots and models and people can park their cars, this is huge for the city.”  

And so far, Ramirez said, the community has given nothing but positive feedback.

“And visitors that come from other leagues are also showing us love because it looks beautiful,” he said. “I want people to come here to feel like this is their home. And what better way to do it besides giving them some art to look at.”

With the backing of police and city officials, Ramirez and Lagos hope to expand more art throughout the city.