I cannot be sure when it was first put up, but I first spotted it in December of 2015, right about the time I’d started my new gig downtown. Along a perpetually weathered strip of SoHo on Thompson Street between Broome and Grand — one that’s always been a magnet for street art — an artist who calls himself Space Invader affixed a brilliant, pixelated portrait of the Ramones (circa their first album cover) as an intricate, tiled mosaic to an age-old, bricked-up window box on the easterly side of the street (essentially the rear of the parking garage on West Broadway). While SoHo isn’t the first neighborhood I’d have chosen to commemorate da brudders, being a lifelong Ramones fan, I loved this bit of street art from the second I laid eyes on it. Anything that gives props to this greatest of New York City bands, to my mind, is a justified endeavor.
Then, as documented on this post, the mosaic started to suffer a bit of physical trauma and endure a torrent of indignities as the building’s caretaker — one assumes — routinely tried to paint over it. By this time last year, the portrait had been crudely painted over with a sickly shade of yellowish beige.
Then, last August, the Ramones triumphantly re-emerged — courtesy of Space Invader? — a little worse for wear, but freshly scrubbed of their yucky beige coating. I was well pleased.
Tonight, however, I spotted something dispiriting. Again, presumably the work of the building’s landlord, the Ramones mosaic appeared to be in the throes of forcible removal, half of its tiles violently chipped away.
Space Invader, the ante has been upped. It's clearly your move.
Pour one out for Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee & Tommy…
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