John Lennon Mural in Pacific Beach, San Diego

The John Lennon mural in San Diego is on the west side of 1020 Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. The portrait there now was painted in 2024 by local muralist Jon Hamrick. It replaced the 2006 original by the Insight 51 artists, which a vandal spray-painted over on 7 August 2024.

The 2006 original

The Insight 51 artists painted the first Lennon portrait on this wall in 2006. It was based on a Robert Whitaker photograph of Lennon from about 1965, a picture titled "Admiration" in which a flower sits over Lennon's eye. The building has had several tenants since then; in 2024 it housed the 365 Reloaded Smoke Shop.

The mural lasted about 18 years, but not untouched. The OB Rag reported that it had been tagged repeatedly for around two years before the end came.

What happened in August 2024

At about 2 a.m. on 7 August 2024, a vandal sprayed paint across the portrait. Security cameras caught it, and San Diego police had not identified the person when the ARCA art-crime blog wrote about the case that October. The damage was judged beyond repair.

Haseeb Akbarzada, who ran the smoke shop, told reporters his windows had been tagged and smashed before and that he had received texts suggesting the vandals were hired. That is his account; no arrest or finding has been reported.

Jon Hamrick's repaint

Akbarzada covered the ruined wall and hired Jon Hamrick, a Pacific Beach muralist. Akbarzada said he paid $3,000 out of his own pocket. Hamrick, in a GoFundMe appeal, said he put in more than a month of work and over $1,000 of his own money. The two accounts don't have to contradict each other, but neither source reconciles them.

Hamrick said the original mural was part of what made him want to paint murals. He projected the image onto the wall with a video projector to get Lennon's likeness right and worked only in spray paint. He described the result as an homage to the 2006 portrait on a fresh coat of paint. The wall is about 14 feet high, and his appeal floated extending the work along the rest of the wall as a further guard against tagging; no source confirms that extension was painted.

Is it still there?

A San Diego photo blog posted a clear shot of the finished Hamrick portrait in May 2025, noting it was painted the previous summer, and the mural was added to OpenStreetMap in December 2025. Murals on private walls can change quickly, so photos older than August 2024 show the earlier Insight 51 work, not the one you will find.

For another Lennon portrait in a US city, see the Tampa bronze statue, or browse the full list.