You Call This Art? If There's A Party Bus And Kahlua Involved, Then, Duh.

At the Academy Awards, Justin Timberlake told us he had a confession to make: "I'm Banksy."

This tells us two things:

1) People these days want to be secret criminals, not secret crimefighters. Remember when people used to say, "I'm Batman"? I guess being a millionaire playboy with a secret alter ego who fights crime is no longer as cool as being a mysterious criminal--since technically, guerrilla graffiti art is generally illegal.

Banksy is one of those mysterious figures whom no one seems to actually know. Our tour guide Russell, in all sincerity, told us how he knows a guy who knows Banksy, and it sounds like this is a common story. Russell was sitting in a bar somewhere in Slovenia, where he met a fellow stencil enthusiast who had apparently once spent an hour in a London pub talking about stenciling with a stranger before figuring out that he was Banksy.

This means that Marina and I now know a guy who knows a guys who knows THE guy. Everyone should know a guy like that. Everyone WANTS to know a guy like that. I think this is what caused the whole hipster movement.

2) Street art is EVERYWHERE. I don't mean simply that street art is now a part of the pop culture mainstream--and I wonder what street artists REALLY think about that; street art is literally everywhere you look, even places you've walked past on numerous occasions without giving a second glance.

Yesterday Marina and I joined a tour set up by TransportedSF. Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds. Let's put it this way: as our converted school bus full of dancing hipsters drove up Van Ness, two homeless guys leaning against McDonalds pointed at us as if to say, "What the f***'s that?" Now that's awesome, when you can befuddle a homeless man, especially if you have a flask of kahlua that you are unafraid to use.

The tour assembled outside the Revolution Cafe on 22nd Street, where Marina bought a plastic cup of spiced fruit from a man in the back of a moving van. Illicit fruit for illicit art: brilliant. We also had cocoa, which we spiced up with kahlua.

Did I mention the Banksy Art Tour was 21+ and BYO?

There were thirty of us, plus Alxndr the host/DJ, Russell the stencil expert, and Alex the driver in pink sunglasses, all piled in to an old school bus. Padded benches lined the sides and back of the bus, and the middle was kept clear for a dance floor.




The first stop was Sycamore Alley, which, oddly enough, was where Marina and her family lived when she was first born. Russell told us how this Banksy piece had been obscured over the years by many other artists wanting to leave their marks. Banksy apparently draws all sorts of reactions, from contemptuous defacing to tributary additions. However, Russell said we could still make out the punchline of the piece.



There is a lot of scribbling on top of the original, but once you make out the quiver of arrows, the feathers, and the sign incorporating the No Trespassing notice, you get the idea. Brilliant.

From there, we drove down Mission towards Duboce, stopped at the corner of Erie. A fence around the parking lot prevented us from getting too close, but it was a remarkable view anyway. A Banksy piece depicting a singing bird was in the center of the wall, with other artistic contributions all around, including a man with a jackhammer at the bottom that was the work of Blek La Rat, one of Banksy's influences.



From there, we drove up Van Ness, turned down a narrow street next to a hotel, where a famous Banksy piece had actually been preserved by the hotel behind plexiglass. Corporate intelligence, in contrast with the Texan owner of Amnesia bar on Valencia, who ordered a Banksy piece there painted over. Remind me never to go to Amnesia again.

Here's the glittery piece on Fern Street:




Which does raise the question: is it still a statement of anarchy if it is preserved behind plexiglass? Regardless, this was one of my favorite pieces for the delicacy of the stencil work; the rat's fur looked amazingly realistic.

Speaking of anarchy, there could be no doubting the anarchic cred of the next piece we saw, overlooking a major North Beach intersection, and framed in such a way as to address the skyscrapers of the Financial District.




Of all the artistic and philosophic questions you might ask, one of the first would be "How the heck did he get up there?"

The highlight of the tour came when we were all standing on the street corner looking at this one, and a little old man and his wife came by to ask us what we were looking at. He got tremendously excited: "THAT'S a Banksy??? We went ALL OVER London looking for a Banksy piece!" We made his day.

From there, we headed to Chinatown, where on a small side street next to a bakery, we saw another piece that was quite detailed and preserved along with a couple additions by some other artist:



This is the bakery where Banksy apparently paid the owner $50 for the right to stencil on the wall.

The last Banksy piece we saw was at Howard and Ninth, featuring a rat and a skull and crossbones.



After that, the happy, drunken bus shouted down the host's suggestion that there was not enough time to stop by the Treasure Island Dance Festival, and so we rolled across the Bay Bridge for fifteen minutes of wild but family-friendly debauchery. The whole day seemed very urbane and awesome. If this was what the people touting Judgement Day on May 21st are trying to warn us about, then bring on the end times. As long as there is kahlua and fascinating street art, that is.

Oh, also, we met Elmo.