Los Angeles residents woke up to the new year with an oddly altered landmark.
The iconic Hollywood sign, a cultural landmark since its creation in 1923, was altered to read "HOLLYWeeD" in an apparent New Year's Eve prank.
The vandal, dressed in all black, was recorded by security cameras scaled a protective fence surrounding the sign, and could face a misdemeanor trespassing charge, LAPD Sgt. Robert Payan told the Associated Press.
The rewriting of the sign was accomplished by the vandal clambering up both of the letter O's in the sign order to drape coverings around them, Payan told the AP.
Shelby Grad, an editor with the Los Angeles Times, tweeted out a brief history of the Hollywood sign being vandalized, noting that this is not the first time the letters have been changed to read "Hollyweed," and reported that the incident was in fact a replay of an incident that took place in 1983.
This is not the first time the Hollywood Sign became the Hollyweed Sign. -- Happened in Dec. 1983 (Her-Ex) pic.twitter.com/dVxXyHt1bo
— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) January 1, 2017
Grad wrote that the sign had also been vandalized to read "Go Navy" and "Cal Tech" in previous years.
Other social media users had a laugh about the vandalism. One twitter user who photographed the vandalism captioned it by writing "2017 starting off strong."
Another user posted the image and added the text "I think security took the night off last night in Hollywood."
Marijuana was legalized for recreational use during California's November 8th elections.
