Recently I told you about the Argus Leader’s interrogation of me about the recent graffiti incidents. Then they wrote this article. The article made me laugh because it was ridiculous to assume I did the art, maybe Nestor was joking, maybe he wasn’t – who knows with those paranoid freaks at the Argus.

They should have at least printed my cartoon with the article!

Are you the city’s guerrilla artist?
By Nestor Ramos

 

It started as a straightforward assignment: find out what you can about the odd new graffiti that’s been showing up around town.
It wasn’t long before it became an obsession.
“Have you seen Ronald McDonald? He’s holding a bomb.” I asked this question so many times that it started to sound reasonable to me.
Maybe we should back up a few days.
The May 14 issue of the New Yorker magazine included a profile of a man known only as Banksy, a wildly talented English graffiti artist with a knack for self-promotion and an anarchist political streak: two (male) cops kissing in the subway; a rat dumping toxic waste down the sewer.
In the grand tradition of glamorizing criminality, the work of Banksy and his contemporaries has become known as Guerrilla Art. Which is sort of like calling a bar fight Guerrilla Boxing.
That same naming convention works for a lot of things.
Officer: “Did you just hit that man with a pie?”
Larcenist: “No, it was a guerrilla makeover.”
But we’re off track again.
After I’d absorbed the article about Banksy, I started to notice the new graffiti. On a prominent building in downtown Sioux Falls, Ronald McDonald was holding a cartoon bomb (perfectly round, long fuse). Like Banksy, the artist – I use the word lightly – had stenciled the McDonald’s mascot onto the wall.
Another stencil left the puzzling message that has since appeared elsewhere: “DISINFORM.” At least three of them were in town at one point.
Clearly, Sioux Falls has its own self-style guerrilla artist – albeit one lacking a bit in the talent department.
Police spokesman Loren McManus said someone called the police information tip line from the East Coast to say the stencils looked like Banksy’s handiwork. But since Banksy is (a) British, (b) extraordinarily wealthy and (c) clever, he was immediately ruled out as a suspect.
McManus said there are no suspects. Typically, the only way such vandals get caught is in the act or, perhaps, bragging to the wrong person.
It’s not just Ronald McDonald. Bart Simpson is on at least two walls in town. Local artist Scott Ehrisman, who sometimes draws cartoons for the Argus Leader (and is everybody’s prime suspect), said he’d heard about a bomber dropping hearts that was painted on an electrical box. I couldn’t find it.
Listen, there’s nothing funny about property damage.
Let’s be more precise: There’s nothing funny about this property damage. If property damage were inherently unfunny, Oliver Hardy would’ve been just another obese man filing piano insurance claims.
But spray painting inane slogans and cartoon characters on walls is not the funny kind of property damage.
I called Mike Beaver, who owns a place called Dischordia, a spot where young people of particular tastes – punk rock, tattered clothes, Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers – congregate for concerts and such.
I asked him whether he knew who was doing it.
“I don’t know, but someone kind of preached to the choir with us,” Beav­er said.
Some night about a month ago, someone spray-painted Ronald McDonald and something nasty about the governor on the back wall at Dischordia.
“Why are they coming to tell me about Gov. Rounds?” Beaver wondered. Beaver’s politics are sympathetic to this position. His wallet is not.
“All you’re doing is costing me money. It was up for about a month. I had to just kind of cover it up with some spray paint,” Beaver said.
I asked Ehrisman whether he had any insight. He made the Banksy connection, too.
“I went and investigated it,” Ehrisman said. “You can get those stencils online.”
Ehrisman said stencils are “sort of an art movement that’s been around for years. … I’m assuming that some younger punk rock kids are doing it. But you never know.”
At this point, I had resorted to wild accusations.
“I think you did it,” I said.
“No,” Ehrisman said. “If I did it, it would be original.”
It’s a fair point.
I drove out to Dischordia, though there hasn’t been a concert there for a week or so. I parked around back and saw where Beaver had painted over the graffiti.
But painted on the wall in a diagonal line were three fresh stencils: Kentucky Fried Chicken patriarch Col. Sanders, a pair of sunglasses on his face, a pair of devil horns on his head.
I may never learn who’s behind the recent graffiti spate – I’ve been disinformed – and those who paid to have the paint removed may never get their money back. But while I’ve got you here, let me just ask you one thing: Was it you?