Restore the Iliad Bookshop's mural

The Iliad Bookshop was founded by Dan Weinstein in 1987, and moved to its current location at the corner of Chandler and Cahuenga Blvds. in North Hollywood in 2006. Besides its vast inventory of used books and its adorable cats, the Iliad has always been known for its beautiful murals. When we moved to our current location, we hired British artist Paul Dilworth to decorate our walls with murals that depicted dozens of famous authors, musicians, mythological characters, and others. Paul has expanded the mural over the years, and we added custom-made giant books as well.

Our mural was more than a source of pride for the Iliad; we believe it was a valuable part of the local community. Travelers from all over the world admired the art; we've had visitors, authors, and even newlyweds pose in front of the mural.

If you'd like to see the mural in its entirety, complete with a list of all the authors who appeared on it, please click here .

On October 23, 2020, we arrived to find that much of the Chandler wall had been vandalized by taggers who painted over a number of author portraits, including Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler. There is a protective coating on the mural, but when the tag is rendered in thick enamel layers there's no way to remove it. All you can do is paint over it.

Of course it broke our hearts (as if 2020 wasn't already hard enough on a small independent bookstore), but more importantly, it left many of our customers and neighbors heartbroken and angry. We painted over the graffiti...

...and were tagged again two days later. Once more we painted over the tag.

It's now been two weeks and we haven't been tagged again, so we're ready to think about fixing the mural. Since the original artist, Paul Dilworth, is on lockdown in the U.K. we can't hire him, but he has recommended a local artist to restore the mural.

This will be an expensive undertaking, during - as we already mentioned - a time when we're already struggling, but so many of you have asked about donating money to restore our mural that we decided to set up this GoFundMe.

We are tremendously grateful to our customers and our neighborhood for loving our mural as much as we do, and we deeply appreciate even the smallest of donations.

Thank you.