This segment originally aired Jan. 9, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
On New Year’s Day, California woke up to find one of its most iconic landmarks altered by Zach “Jesus Hands” Fernandez. But the LAPD wasn’t laughing. They’re planning trespassing charges for the perpetrator, who turned himself in last week.
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Fernandez is a musician, videographer, and self-proclaimed pot artist who usually works on smaller-scale pieces in his studio in downtown Los Angeles. He said the whole process took about 3 hours.
“I let just a very, very few people know. I asked a few people and everybody looked at me like, ‘You’re nuts, dude, no way. I’m not doing that,’” Fernandez told VICE News correspondent Dexter Thomas in L.A. “I knew I needed help, but nobody would give it to me.”
The move was inspired by the original “Hollyweed” prank, by a few art students in 1976, to celebrate the relaxing of marijuana laws at the time.
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