Four murals went white in Clarion Alley. The 311 file has no way to see it.

Clarion Alley runs one block between Mission and Valencia, and the murals on its walls are why the block is famous. Last week someone with a paint roller covered four of them. A neighbor who keeps a studio on the alley, Doug Rhodes, stopped the worker as he started on the fourth mural. The man said his boss told him to.

Mission Local reported the whitewash. Three murals went completely, one partially. Makras Real Estate, which manages the building, told the Clarion Alley Mural Project by email that the property owner had ordered an employee to paint over reported graffiti. The building is 3331 17th Street. The owner, the Guerrero V Espinoza Trust, has held it since 2001, city records show.

The lost walls include a 2016 memorial for the artist and activist Kirsten Brydum, a 2015 tribute to Adobe Books, a tribute to the graffiti artist Chloe, known as Marfa, and a mural that students from Graffiti Camp for Girls finished this spring. The mural project says the murals can be restored and the cost is unclear. CAMP says it has kept written and verbal agreements with the alley's owners for 34 years, going on 35.

The public record around the alley tells a different part of the story. In the 60 days through September 1, the San Francisco 311 file shows 64 requests tied to Clarion Alley addresses: 37 for street and sidewalk cleaning, 12 for encampments, nine general requests. Graffiti shows up three times, all in early August: a lamp pole at 98 Clarion that a city crew painted, a wall at 92 Clarion still open, and a commercial building at the Mission corner still open.

Nothing in the file can register a whitewashed mural. The system sorts paint on private walls into Graffiti Private, the category that makes the owner responsible for cleanup. A mural older than most of the people walking the alley and a fresh tag file the same way, if either gets filed at all. The week the murals disappeared produced seven requests on the alley, all for trash and debris. The paint went on, and the record logged nothing.

Last year the same collision happened one building over, in effect: a landlord ordered the 33-year-old Chuy Campusano mural painted over. Family and friends restored it. It was tagged again this year. The cycle is the point. Murals on private walls live on agreements, not on the record, and the record is what the city acts on.

Somebody in City Hall noticed. Jennifer Ferrigno, legislative aide to District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, told Mission Local the office is ready to support community partners restoring the artwork and caring for the alley. CAMP has a restoration fundraiser running. The city's file cannot hold a mural. The neighborhood can, if it pays for the paint.