San Francisco's historic Sentinel Building is one of North Beach's most iconic structures, a great green tower owned by director Francis Ford Coppola. Now home to (among other tenants) Coppola's American Zoetrope studio and Cafe Zoetrope, it's the sort of place that stops tourists in their tracks for a selfie in front of its 8-stories-up dome — a dome that this weekend was nastily defaced by vandals, taggers who presumably love the smell of spray paint in the afternoon, night, and morning.
According to KPIX, the hooligans tagged the dome Saturday night, perhaps by way of a fire escape that runs up the side of the structure. Details other than that are scarce, and a call to the San Francisco Police Department regarding the incident was not returned at publication time.
The Sentinel Building is also known as the Columbus Tower, and first opened in 1907. Once owned by The Kingston Trio, it later fell into a dangerous state of neglect and was purchased and renovated by Coppola in the 1970s. It is San Francisco's "Designated Landmark" Number 33.