It’s “ghetto” fabulous.
Determined to protect the stencil elusive graffiti artist Banksy bestowed on their neighborhood Monday, two South Bronx residents sat guard at makeshift barrier to discourage rival taggers from wrecking it – stringing a clothes line and hanging blankets to cover the artwork and wrapping the area in caution tape.
The “independent contractors,’’ hired by the building owner, also brought in a chair and couch for naps their overnight stint and accepted tips for their efforts from Banksy gawkers.
“They’re being really funny and easy going, they’re letting people cross the caution tape to take pics,” Gothamist’s Nic Garcia reported. “They heard a little about Banksy from the people here and the Internet, but before that they didn’t know him.”
Crowds began flocking to see the stencil at East 153rd Street and Elston Avenue – depicting a boy dress ala Little Lord Fauntleroy, spraying the words “Ghetto 4 Life” as his butler looks on – shortly after lunchtime Monday. It’s the 21st in a series during Banksy’s month long New York “residency.”
By mid-afternoon, building owner David Damaghi had brought in his “gate guy” to measure the piece and was contemplating covering it with Plexiglas and a $4,000 gate. He paid the two men to watch over the stencil in the meantime.
Banksy pieces in Red Hook, the Upper West Side and Williamsburg are also being guarded against vandalism, and several building owners are intent on preserving the wall stencils.
In East New York, a rag tag team of “guards” were charging passersby to see a Banksy they’d covered with blankets.
“They’re both super friendly, they’re ‘independent contractors’ who were hired by the building owner. They’re being really funny and easy going, they’re letting people cross the caution tape to take pics. They heard a little about Banksy from the people here and the internet, but before that they didn’t know him.”
Owner Damaghi said he got a call from the NYPD asking him if he wanted to press charges, but the building owner declined.
Mayor Bloomberg has blasted Banksy’s prolific tags, saying it’s vandalism, not art, and law enforcement sources have told The Post they want to question the graffiti guru – but first they have to catch him in the act, or get a complaint.
The city has already power-scrubbed one purported Banksy piece from a wall near the Brooklyn Promenade.
Meanwhile yesterday, cops swarmed another Banksy piece – a massive fiberglass Ronald McDonald getting his shoes signed by a “real live boy” — that has been making the rounds at outposts of the ubiquitous fast food chain since last week.
As many as five squad cars, and a dozen cops, descended outside McDonalds on Essex and Delancey Streets Monday afternoon after a large crowd gathered to see “Shoe Shine,” witnesses said.
Photographer Sean Shapiro said one of the cops confronted the shoe-shining actor, before Banksy operatives came and hauled the sculpture away.