The Bronx is burning – with Banksy fever.
Swarms of diehard Banksy devotees made the trek to East 153rd Street and Elston Avenue Monday to have a look at the latest tag from the elusive graffiti guru.
The South Bronx location was revealed shortly before lunchtime, and within an hour as many as 50 people at a time were stopping to admire the latest stencil-work depicting a young boy, looking a bit like a Little Lord Fauntleroy, spray painting the message “Ghetto 4 Life” onto the wall as a butler, carrying a cocktail tray full of spray cans, looks on.
Belgian tourist Gitte Van Hoyweghen, 38, a self-proclaimed big Banksy fan, headed to the rough-and-tumble neighborhood just to see the new stencil, unfazed that the latest installment is in the 40th precinct, which has reported seven murders, 16 rapes, 354 robberies and 396 felony assaults so far this year.
“Otherwise I would not have come to the Bronx,” she told The Post, noting that folks in her home country are following Banksy’s month-long New York “residency.”
“They’re even following him in Belgium, “ she said. “For me, it’s the humor and the message and how fast it can go away. He gives it to the street and the street decides what to do with it.”
Another onlooker said he’d come from Connecticut, specifically to see the Banksy piece.
New Yorker Jackie Hadel, who travels the world teaching English teachers and documenting street artists, postponed a Florida trip, planned for last week, to track Banksy.
“It feels like I’m meant to be here so I couldn’t leave,” Hadel said as she took in the South Bronx piece. “I ate that (first) ticket and got another for Nov. 2.”
Artist Caryn Waechter, 36, of Washington Heights, came to see the work and said she’s tracked Banksy all over New York.
“It’s an adventure, it’s exciting. It just gives me a rush every day. And I’m meeting people in places I don’t usually go,” she said.
Clinton Gary, 46, who lives in the neighborhood, didn’t realize what he was seeing when he noticed a figure — dressed in a gray hoodie, black jeans and sporting a red backpack — working on the artwork at 4 am as he drove to his job at the New York Public Library.
The stenciled figures were already on the wall, Gary, himself a former tagger, said, adding, “He was just finishing the ‘Ghetto 4 Life.’
“I got home and I saw the crowd and I said, “Oh, man.’ That was that guy this morning,” Gary said.
Like other New Yorkers who’ve found their property suddenly tagged by Banksy, the Bronx building’s owner, David Damaghi, was taking no chances that his original would be destroyed.
“I’m off to meet my gate guy,” Damaghi said as the crowd thinned later in the afternoon.
“Everybody says it’s a work of art, so we want to try to do what we can to protect it. Let the people enjoy it,” he said.
By 4 pm, the roll-down gate installer was at the site, measuring. Damaghi may also install Plexiglas. The gate would cost about $4,000 — and the owner has hired a private security guard to watch the wall until it’s installed.
“I wish he’d painted it on canvas,” Damaghi lamented.
Damaghi will be the third building owner to protect a wall containing Banksy artwork.
Banksy’s stencil of two geisha girls on a Williamsburg wall is protected by plexiglass and a roll-down gate, and the owners said yesterday they’re working on a schedule for when the work will be open for public viewing.
“We don’t work all the time,” the owner, who didn’t want his name used, said yesterday. “[But]we’re going to give as many hours as we can.”
A piece that went up on the wall at Upper West Side landmark Zabar’s is also getting the whit-glove treatment from building and business owner Saul Zabar.
He covered the piece — of a small boy whacking a standpipe with a mallet like a test-your-strength carnival game — with Plexiglas when it went up Sunday, but is looking for a better solution after vandals hit the protective covering with red spray paint during the night.
A maintenance crew cleaned up the tagging Monday as a crowd of onlookers cheered. Zabar, who says he is “enchanted” by the Banksy work and “incensed” that someone would try and destroy it, said he will likely put surveillance cameras up to monitor the piece.
Outside Zabar’s Monday, UK vacationers Marjorie Roe, 62, and husband Alan, 67, said they were on the way to the Guggenheim when they saw the Banksy and stopped in their tracks.
“We’ve come all the way from England to find Banksy around the corner,” Marjorie said, marveling at the coincidence.
Meanwhile, the creators of a Central Park pop-up stand selling fake Banksys revealed that they’d sold 40 knockoffs of the artist’s work in less than an hour Saturday.
In a riff on Banksy’s surprise anonymous sale a week earlier — where the artist hired an older man to sell his original canvases to unsuspecting buyers at just $60 a pop — self-described artist and social commentary hoaxer Dave Circelli had hordes of folks eager to buy their phony wares.
“Same price. Fake art,” Circelli noted on a video of the sale posted to YouTube.
Each canvas came with a “legally notarized” “Certificate of Inauthenticity.”
As the camera rolls across a sign reading “Fake Banksy” and pans in on some of the tag artist’s most famous pieces — including “Heavy Weaponry Rocket Bomb Elephant” and his trademark stenciled monkey, wearing a “Keep it Real” sandwich board — passersby stop, do doubletakes, and then fork over their cash.
Circelli’s video of the sale mimics the style of the footage Banksy posted online after his own Saturday surprise, when just three people bought his artwork.
“All 40 sold in just one hour. Including the price sign,” Circelli noted of his faux Banksys.
At least one New Yorker has had enough of Banksy and wishes he’d leave town.
Brooklyn artist Alex Gardega unveiled a 50-foot cargo trailer in Greenpoint featuring a replica of a Michelangelo figure painting “Banksy Go Home!” in the sky.
“You can’t just waltz into Brooklyn, you have to earn Brooklyn” said Gardega, calling street art “slap dash and wanting in technique.”
