Man, what a buzzkill.

When the mural of Johnny Cash smoking a cigarette on the side of the building at 314 E. 13th Ave. was replaced with Grateful Dead lead man Jerry Garcia, the change was met not with praise but, rather, buckets of paint thrown by vandals.

Jay Bianchi, owner of Quixote’s True Blue, formerly the site of Bender’s 13th Ave. Tavern, said he was upset by last week’s vandalism, but said he understood it.

“People get angry over change,” Bianchi said. “I am actually kind of happy people care so much they are willing to fight for it.”

The grand opening of Quixote’s True Blue was Thursday night, and Bianchi said it was important to quickly let the community know the bar would be different.

“We are not a Johnny Cash bar,” he said. “But we are art lovers.”

David Hernandez, 28, a nursing student at Metro State University of Denver, lives nearby — and his Capitol Hill apartment window looks out onto the mural. He’s a fan of Johnny Cash, who died in 2003 at age 71, but Hernandez said the vandalism was out of line.

“My heart goes out to the artist,” he said.

Hernandez said he’s puzzled by the vandalism.

“Who do they think they represent in the community by going out and doing this?” he said. “I really don’t know.”

When the artist was painting the now-defaced Garcia mural, passers-by seemed to enjoy the image, Hernandez said.

“People stopped and shared stories about Jerry Garcia,” he said.

An initial portrait of Garcia, which Hernandez saw as cartoonish, got lots of negative feedback. He described the next version as “darker, more introspective.”

“The second one was great,” Hernandez said. “I think there was more thought put into this one.”

Bianchi said the mural will be repainted, again, but wasn’t sure whether the image would be one of Garcia, who died in 1995 at age 53, or of something else related to the Grateful Dead genre of music.