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Journalism of Courage
New Yorkers have stolen it,painted over it,urinated on it,tagged it,charged for it,fought about it,sneered at it,guarded it,sold it to the highest bidder and chased it to corners of the city that they had heretofore never been.
Nearly every day,as part of what he called his residency,Banksy has posted on his website a photo of a new piece a wry scrawl,a cheeky silhouette,a cartoony sculpture,an installation and identified its location by neighbourhood. He has wended through all five boroughs with the project,titled Better Out Than In. As soon as a post goes up,little armies of people set out to find it Banksys work sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars,and here it was hanging free.
Borough by borough,reactions differed,revealing a facet of New York character perhaps not so homogeneous after all every time a Banksy popped up. In a way,it took this Englishman to remind New Yorkers that parts of the city remain distinct as foreign lands.
Mike Ellyson,33,an artist who lives in Brooklyns East Williamsburg area,said he watched in awe a few days ago as a worker began scrubbing a Banksy tag off a Laundromat wall,causing onlookers to yell,imploring him to stop.
The Police Department has gotten no official complaints,a spokesman said,adding that apprehension was difficult because we dont know who Banksy is,if he exists at all. Mayor Michael Bloombergs tut-tut response that graffiti was a sign of decay and loss of control only gave the project more of a boost.
The project has also stirred up animosity. This city has bred some serious street artists,after all,few of whom have garnered the fame enjoyed by Banksy.
My friends believe it is a ploy to make New York cool again, said Tiffton Meares,31,a chef from Williamsburg.
Banksy fans lured to hard-bitten East New York were taken aback when they encountered a group of tetchy residents,who had shielded the little graffiti beaver with cardboard and were demanding pay per view.
Not so for East Williamsburg,where a tagger was tackled by a building manager after he scrawled over Banksys image of geishas on a bridge. The owners hired security guards and installed plexiglass and a roll-down gate.
A lot of people come to the neighbourhood, said the manager,Jose Goya,33. Now we have something to show them. Something nice.
Ruben Diaz Jr,the Bronx borough president,was also thrilled at least at first. Banksy graced the South Bronx with a fibreglass replica of an ill-tempered Ronald McDonald watching as a dirty ragamuffin shined his giant shoes. Delighted,Diaz likened Banksy to a contemporary-day Picasso.
Then Banksy unveiled his second Bronx offering: a stencil of a schoolboy spray-painting the words Ghetto 4 Life as a butler proffered a tray of paint cans. Furious,Diaz fired off a statement saying the word ghetto was a slur.
Yet the buildings owners,determined to protect it,first hired security guards to watch over it and then set a thick sheet of glass over it,and a roll-down gate.
All of which struck several residents of the Bronx,birthplace and home to famously dazzling street art,as downright absurd.
You go around the Bronx and there are pieces grander than that, said Miguel Delgado,30,a chef.
Not every borough got equal attention. Queens has received two pieces so far,one of which,a sculpture of a Sphinx,was quickly sold off to a gallery.
On a wall in Brooklyn on October 25,an installment simply read this site contains blocked messages,an apparent reference to an op-ed written by Banksy denouncing 1 World Trade Center. Banksy sent the article to The New York Times,a spokeswoman said. What he ended up submitting,she said,wasnt at all what we were expecting,so it was rejected.
Although Banksys residency came to an end on Halloween,tourists and local residents alike are still racing about town trying to catch sight of what is left.
