New Orleans and the graffiticular stylings of Banksy

Now, I’m not here to argue graf­fi­ti as a legit­i­mate art form (which it is), or say that its pres­ence is a net pos­i­tive for soci­ety  (which it’s not). I’d rather sim­ply point out that dur­ing our recent trip to New Orleans, my sis­ter and I twice stum­bled upon works of per­haps the best-known graf­fi­ti artist in the world: Banksy.

I remem­bered read­ing about Banksy’s pieces in New Orleans, but could­n’t remem­ber at what point, post-Katrina, they appeared. It was nice to know that at least a cou­ple of them are still intact today, even if more (rel­a­tive­ly) tal­ent­less stuff has gone up near­by in the year-and-a-half since Lin­coln. Nice, though, that the new addi­tions respect­ed Abe’s space!

The first time we saw one, we were exit­ing I‑10 at Canal Street, on our way to the Algiers Fer­ry, when some­thing caught my eye… some­thing from the Inter­net! I knew right away that I need­ed a pho­to of it, but could­n’t find a place to park just then, so we found our­selves stuck in Clai­borne Street traf­fic for a while until we could make it back to Tulane Ave, the first street point­ing in the right direc­tion (after two inward-facing one-ways!). We made it back and found a place to park so I could get out and took a few photos.

The sec­ond (and sad­ly, final) Banksy art sight­ing of our trip hap­pened on our last night in town, on our way to an ill-fated trip to Yo Mama’s. We noticed the girl, missed the turn, and had to loop around a few blocks, but ulti­mate­ly man­aged to cap­ture the sec­ond piece you see above. It was right across Ker­lerec Street from the Ram­part Food Store.

Cool art, but what of the rights of the prop­er­ty own­ers? Yes, there is that… but Banksy can come ‘tag up’ on my car when­ev­er s/he wants!

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