A billboard promoting the 2010 Census on a building at Virgil and Santa Monica. (Pablo Goldstein / L.A. Material)
ABOVE A 7-ELEVEN PARKING LOT, an image of a woman breastfeeding her child looks out over a busy corner of Virgil Village.
The image, affixed to the side of a two-story building at 1024 Virgil Avenue, is part of a billboard encouraging Angelenos to fill out the 2010 Census. And it has remained in place well past the tabulation of not just that count, but also the succeeding 2020 Census.
In the intervening years, a period bookended by the opening of Sqirl in 2011 and the 2025 Courage Bagel cameo on HBO’s I Love L.A., the billboard has become one of the only unchanged elements in a rapidly transforming neighborhood. Since the 2010 Census, the counted Hispanic/Latino population in the neighborhood has dropped by about six thousand people, falling under a majority.
Through it all, the billboard has endured. But with its irregular shape and lack of a visible permit number, is it even a legal billboard? Who put it up? And above all, why is it still there?
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