And it's being destroyed by vandals bit by bit.

"[It's] art terrorism," a furious Don LeBaron, member of the Tulare Cultural Art Foundation, says of the graffiti. "When somebody defaces a piece of public art, it's terrorism."

The business at Blackstone Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue has been vandalized several times, officials there say. Each time, the operators paint over the south-wall graffiti -- eliminating still more of the mural.

But the destruction no longer is being ignored.

After learning about the vandalism, Tulare Improvement Program Coordinator Jerry Magoon said it's time for a restoration project. The mural, created by artist Antonio Reyna, will be touched up and cleaned up, Magoon said.

It can't happen too soon, said Claude Meitzenheimer, Tulare's graffiti-removal czar.

"It needs immediate attention. It's just a mess," the community volunteer said. "We'll make every effort to clean it up."

The mural is between 20 and 30 years old, Meitzenheimer said.

LeBaron, whose organization promotes several murals in downtown Tulare, says the vandalism strikes at the heart of the mural's message of tolerance and peace. He calls the vandals "idiots" who don't appreciate the artwork's cultural significance.

"It's a sad commentary on how out of tune the people who commit this are," he said. "It shows how ignorant these guys are. It's total ignorance. Some of these guys don't have a clue of what's going on."

Meitzenheimer said he has battled graffiti in and around the mural for years. At times, the site has looked like a "war zone," he said.

Meitzenheimer is no fan of the business's clean-up efforts, which left the mural pockmarked with different-colored squares of paint. But store clerk Abe Kahassay said that in the past, it often took too long for city officials to deal with the graffiti and the business had to step in.

LeBaron, who has been involved in mural-restoration projects in the past, said clean-up efforts can be costly. Meitzenheimer, though, says it won't take much to make a big improvement.

"I feel we could do something," he said.