Why This Hidden Alleyway is Instagram-Famous

Weiying Olivia Huang walks up to the middle of an alleyway that’s nestled between a restaurant and a Korean supermarket and bursting with gradations of color and light. She puts down her bag.

Fragmented beams of blue and yellow pour down from the plastic panes of a stained glass canopy and bounce off her long shiny black hair as she sets up her tripod and pivots a camera toward Lamar ‘Prop’ Atkins. She presses “record.”

At one end of the alley, Atkins, sporting a burnt orange hat and purple latex gloves, carefully etches ‘PROP’ in giant block letters on a wall that’s already adorned with graffiti art. A black gym bag filled with at least a dozen bottles of spray paint rests against the wall 10 feet away.

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