The NYPD can’t catch the guy who’s putting up the graffiti – but they’ve arrested some guys who tried to take it down.
After a month of fruitlessly chasing elusive British street artist Banksy -– blasted as a vandal by Mayor Bloomberg — cops on Thursday descended en masse on a Queens building and nabbed two young men who were trying to make off with the latest, and last, installment in the graffiti guru’s month-long New York City tagging tour. Two other men standing nearby were also arrested.
Shortly after noon, four squad cars and an unmarked vehicle swooped onto a property at 35th Street and Borden Avenue just as two of the purported pilferers were coming off a ladder they’d hauled from down the street in order to reach the Banksy – a massive inflatable that spells out the artist’s name in graffiti-style letters, floating above a grey brick wall just off the Long Island Expressway.
“Why are you up there?” one of the cops shouted to a man holding the Banksy balloon who looked to be in his late teens. “You know you are trespassing. You’re on someone’s property.”
Seconds later, the pair, along with two other men who had been standing nearby, were arrested and taken to the 108th Precinct.
“This sucks! I’m just going to put it up in a museum!” one of the men shouted as he was hauled away.
Police took the Banksy piece, deflated it and carted it off in a van to a precinct garage. It is being held as “arrest evidence,” police said.
Three of the men were hit with criminal trespassing, and one of those three was also charged with criminal mischief. A fourth, a photographer, was charged with disorderly conduct and released.
To reach the inflatable, the men used a ladder to reach a scaffold. At one point during the attempted removal, at least one of the men jumped from the scaffold to the roof of a parked car.
The building that Banksy used is for sale, and empty, neighbors said. A business across the street rents part of the lot to park cars.
But somebody complained, police said. One person called to gripe about crowds blocking traffic. Another call came from owner of car that was jumped on.
The exhibit went up early Thursday morning, said Joban Sebastian, who works across the street from the installation.
“I pulled up at 6:30, there was a white truck parked outside,” said Sebastian, a salesman at Manhattan Laminates.
“I saw three gentleman outside. One was wearing a white jumpsuit, another guy had on a red beanie hat, and I saw another guy wearing a yellow hat. They were using an orange ladder to get the thing up.”
“At first I thought they were putting up a billboard because that space was used for that before. The guy in the white jumpsuit was doing most of the manual labor. The guy in the beanie hat looked kind of wary on the ladder,” he said. “They all looked like hipsters from Williamsburg.”
“ I didn’t know it was a Banksy until they pulled off the cover and left,” Sebastian said. “But I think it’s fun. It brings a certain light to the city, a change for people to see something exciting. People are more in love with the myth of the man than the art because everyone want to see him.”
“At least this gets people out to this part of the city…this is acceptable art because it’s not destroying anyone’s property. It’s an empty lot.”
Midway through his 31-day New York tour, the Mayor declared Bansky a vandal and said graffiti is “a sign of decay and loss.” NYPD sources said cops were ready to arrest him – but had to catch him in the act.
Thursday’s arrest of the would-be thieves came shortly after Banksy revealed the piece on his website, telling fans it was his last.
“Well, this is the last day of the show, and I’d like to say we’re going out on a high note,” an audio accompanying the post noted. “And, I guess in a way, we are.”
As “New York, New York” began to play in the background, the narration, laced with sarcasm and humor, continued: “This is a sideways take on the ubiquitous spray-painted bubble lettering that actually floats. It’s an homage of sorts to the most prevalent form of graffiti in the city that invented it for the modern era.’’
“Or, it’s another Banksy piece that’s full of hot air.’’
“So, what does the artist hope to have achieved with this so-called residency? Shame it didn’t get any press. He told me ‘If just one child has been inspired to pick up a can of paint and make some art–well that would be statistically disappointing considering how much work I put in.’”
“It’s been an interesting experiment,” the audio noted. “But is there a cohesive message behind it? I gave the artist two minutes to think of one.
“Banksy asserts that outside is where art should live, amongst us. And rather than street art being a ‘fad,’ maybe it’s the last thousand years of art history that are the blip — when art came inside in service of the church and institutions. But arts rightful place is on the cave walls of our communities. Where it can act as a public service, provoke debate, voice concerns, forge identities.
“The world we live in today is run, visually at least, by traffic signs, billboards, and planning committees. Is that it? Don’t we want to live in a world made of art, not just decorated by it?”
“Thanks for coming.”