The Kid's Got Eyes Up His Nose

Breaking news - local 'graffiti' artist Judith Supine unfurled a 50' piece of 'street art' from the Manhattan Bridge. You see these pieces all over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. I, personally, find them pretty cool. Nevertheless, I do find that they lack a certain street cache. I mean, 1) they're not actually graffiti, and 2) they reek of art-school hipster subversiveness, which is to say, they aren't subversive at all. Indeed, the unfurling of a banner-type piece is far from the 'hit' made on the Brooklyn Bridge by local guerilla artist David Smith, aka Sane Smith, nearly 20 yrs. ago. This cat hit everything - all the subways, wharehouses, street signs, everywhere visible. But nothing had, and nothing has yet, measured up to the work done on the Manhattan tower of Brooklyn Bridge. Apparently, Smith had to stand on a 1 1/2 foot ledge on the outside of the bridge for something like two hours to complete the tag. Despite the fact that Sane Smith was everywhere, and David Smith spoke openly, if in the third person, about Sane's goings-on, city cops and transportation officials were unable to catch him. According to one, "The kid's got eyes up his nose." Unfortunately, legend has it that Sane committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge when his father, a Harvard prof, was threatened with a lawsuit for 1.5 million dollars to cover his son's intrepid creativity.

Dig this link for the original NYTimes article on the Brooklyn Bridge hit. http://graffitiresearchlab.com/sanesmith.jpg