Members of the legendary Bronx-based Tats Cru have been painting legal murals on a huge wall off Avenue A and 2nd Street for the past few years. I haven’t loved all of them. The previous two were too cartoonish and gimmicky for me. But the latest one — that I passed today — is working. My favorite segments are those by How and Nosm and the tribute to Sace IRAK Irak painted by Revok who joined the Mural Kings for this wall.
Looks like the IRAK guys have just hit up Barry McGee aka Twist’s legal wall of tags at Bowery and Houston in NYC and covered it with a massive fire extinguisher tribute piece to Sace aka Dash Snow. As much as I loved McGee’s mural, this piece is damn beautiful and I love that this wall got hit up so massively and illegally. Given that McGee’s mural was a bunch of tags, it only seems right that they spot be covered by something nice and illegal. Sace’s name was put up in the original mural though (see the Sacer by the top left corner in this photo)
If you don’t like it, it’s probably worth pointing out what McGee usually does when someone commissions him to paint murals.
Update: Based on this photo by Dante Ross, it looks like somebody’s already been brought in with a scissor lift to cover up the wall. Pretty useless to try buffing it if you ask me. IRAK will just be back if they want to be.
Update 2: Okay nevermind that first update. Not totally sure what’s going on here anymore, but based on info from Luna Park, photos from Martha Cooper and a photo by EssG (thanks to foodofthefuture for those tips) it now sounds like the wall was painted legally.
Update 3: Kathy Grayson’s blog clarifies things. The wall was repainted with permission. It will last 1 day only (which sucks for me because I’ll be in NYC tomorrow evening) before being completely buffed over, and another artist or artists will be repainting the wall next week.
Photo by Sabeth718
