Tag Archives: graffiti art

Horror Street: The Visible Woman

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Photo © 2021 Steven A. Roman

We return to the back streets of Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg neighborhood for The Visible Woman, a building-wide mural that graced the side of a commercial building on the corner of Gardner Avenue and Randolph Street, which I came across in September 2021 during my pandemic-inspired wanderings through the less-populated industrial areas of New York City. Delivery trucks zipping up and down the streets made it impossible for me to get a wider shot of the mural, so here’s a pic courtesy of Google Street Views. And yes, the bottom half had been just as tagged by others when I took my photo; a shame, really.

Photo © Google Street Views

The mural is the work of a graffiti artist named Nychos, who’s a member of the Brooklyn artist community called the Bushwick Collective. And to see the unblemished version of the original painting, check out this YouTube drone camera footage taken after the mural’s completion. Very nice work, indeed. And appropriately horrific for us!

Be sure to check out my previous Horror Street entries. And stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! 

Horror Street: Nosferatu

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

This time around, we have an appearance by the nefarious vampire lord Count Graf Orlock, star of the classic 1922 German silent movie Nosferatu. I came across this mural in September 2021 along the border that connects the neighborhoods of Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg and Queens’s Ridgewood. No idea who the artist is, unfortunately.

Still, there’s no better time for the count to make his Horror Street debut than now, because 2022 is Nosferatu’s 100th anniversary!

Directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as the rat-faced, corpselike Count Graf Orlock, Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, with character names changed and plot points slightly adjusted, in an attempt to avoid a copyright lawsuit—a ploy that ultimately failed when the Stoker Estate and its attorneys came calling; worse yet, they insisted as part of the settlement that every copy of the film be destroyed! 

Some prints survived, of course, and a very good thing that was, because Nosferatu is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, made memorable by the combination of iconic imagery from Murnau and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, and Schreck’s fearsome portrayal of the monster. If you’ve never seen it, or haven’t watched it in some time, do yourself a favor and give Nosferatu a look.

So, happy 100th Anniversary to F.W. Murnau and Max Schreck and all the cast and crew of Nosferatu—you made an exceptional horror film that’s still thrilling fans to this day. Congratulations!

Be sure to check out my previous Horror Street entries. And stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! 

Horror Street: The Demon Door

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Today’s pic was snapped in 2019, while I was wandering the streets of lower Manhattan. I don’t know what might be lurking behind that ominous face, but all it would take to find out is by grasping that convenient—and oh so inviting—handle. Care to give it a turn…?

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, and the Spooky Forest!

Horror Street: The Spooky Forest

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Today, on Wednesday the 13th, we pay a visit to the Spooky Forest, a mural I came across during my wanderings in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Long Island City back in 2018. It’s a mural by Josh McQuary, aka McMonster—who, if the Googling search is correct, is a Portland, Oregon artist (clicking the link will take you to his Instagram page). 

An amazingly atmospheric bit of work, don’t you think? Although I’m not sure if I’d want to stop by this particular wood on a snowy evening!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, and the scarifying Ghoulmobile, and the regal Griffin!

Horror Street: The Griffin

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Today we return to the Welling Court Mural Project for another episode of monster hunting. Welling Court is a street located in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, and for over a decade it’s hosted a streetside art gallery showcasing the graffiti-mural works of New York area artists. It’s here that in 2018 I found the rarely seen mythological beast known as…The Griffin!

Griffin-WellingCt-2018

Amazing work, don’t you think? And now that I know that there’s a 2020 version of the “show,” even in these Pandemic Times, I can’t wait to see what creatures are currently lurking in the nooks and crannies of Welling Court!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, and the scarifying Ghoulmobile!

Horror Street: Ghoulmobile

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Welcome back to Horror Street, an ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City.

Today, we’re in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Sunnyside, home to the offices of Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts (and Marvel Comics hero Peter Parker, if you’ve seen the movies Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home).

Ghoulmobile-Sunnyside-2018

What you see here (click to embiggen, as they say) is what’s known as an Interceptor II, or GO-4 Parking Enforcement vehicle, manufactured by Canada’s Westward Industries and used in New York primarily by the traffic enforcement division and the Parks Department.

NYPD-InterceptorThe GO-4 is a three-wheeled, one-person scooter that you’ll find tooling around neighborhoods in search of cars to be ticketed for violations, or in parks that need to be patrolled but don’t have mounted police riding horseback. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll ever see involved in a high-speed car chase, since its top speed is around 50 mph, and what’s interesting is that in order to qualify as a “street legal” vehicle they’re registered as motorcycles.

But based on its unique, ghoulish paint job, this particular Interceptor isn’t used for patrolling parks; clearly it’s for cruising the streets of Gothopolis, that city of monsters that lives right alongside New York City but can only be seen by people with special sight—people like our own Pandora Zwieback. Now that she has her learner’s permit, Pan probably wouldn’t mind getting one for herself—if she could convince her parents to spring for one!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, and the beast called Queens’thluhu!

Horror Street: Queens’thulhu

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Welcome back to Horror Street, an ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City. Last time, I poked around the photo archive I’ve built up over the years and came up with a cool oddity from the streets of Astoria, Queens.

This one’s a more recent photo, taken as I was strolling through another Queens neighborhood, Maspeth, where I stumbled across the terror of…Queens’thulhu!

Queensthulhu

Okay, maybe it’s not an exact likeness of the great Cthulhu, the Elder God created by author H.P. Lovecraft in his many horror stories; the mammoth creature from beyond time and space who lies sleeping in the waters of the South Pacific, waiting for the moment to awaken and terrorize the world…but that was the first impression I got when I laid eyes on the thing. A bored-looking Elder God, to be sure. Or maybe he’s just sleepy.

What made the discovery really memorable happened while I was taking the picture. A black Trans Am rolled up behind me, and the driver leaned across the front seat to call out to me.

“That your writing?” the guy asked, pointing to the graffitied horror.

I guess with the black jeans and black Ghostbusters T-shirt I was wearing, maybe I looked something like a graffiti artist?

“Nope, just admiring it,” I said.

Seby-NametagHe nodded, got out of the car, walked over to the wall beside the art—and tagged it. Then he jumped back in his ride and took off.

So if I understand graffiti etiquette correctly, the guy asked if it was my work so as to not intrude on “my” canvas—at least not while I was around. Why get into a street brawl over a blank wall, right? But since it wasn’t mine, he made quick use of the space.

So, nice work…uh, Seby. (That is a Y at the end, right?)

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, and Where the Gene Wilder Things Are!

Horror Street: Where the Gene Wilder Things Are

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Welcome back to Horror Street, an ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City.

This time around, it’s Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are meets Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in this imaginative mural from 2017. I don’t remember where exactly I came across this art, but I have a feeling it was in Queens, and possibly part of that year’s Welling Court Mural Project, which I talked about in the last installment.

Gene-Wilder-Thing-2017

Sendak’s monsters, of course, make this a perfect fit for Horror Street. But as anyone who’s grown up watching Willy Wonka—not the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp misfire from 2005, but the 1970s classic—can tell you, the memorable Wilder-starring adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory qualifies as a horror movie in its own right. (Then again, have you ever read the source novel? It’s wonderfully macabre.)

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire and the demonic D-Rod!

Horror Street: D-Rod

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Welcome back to Horror Street, an ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City. I kicked off this occasional series back on April 27 with a visit to the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Williamsburg, where I found the ominous Brooklyn Vampire.

Today, we’re back in Pan’s home borough of Queens, New York—specifically the neighborhood called Astoria, where you’ll find the Welling Court Mural Project. As the story goes, back in 2009, the residents of Welling Court—a backward-L-shaped street that runs all of two blocks—decided they wanted to spruce up the area. And so they invited the grafitti artists of Ad Hoc Art (a gallery in Brooklyn) to have-at-it with any blank wall they came across and let their creativity run wild. It didn’t take long for the project to spread beyond Welling Court into the neighboring streets, creating a unique gallery of amazing graffiti murals that’s accessible to the public 24/7.

Demon-Rod-WellingCt-2018

Of course, since it’s street art, and since the project boasts new murals every year, it means the art you see today in all likelihood won’t be there next year, replaced by a new piece. Such is the case with today’s photo from my 2018 visit to Welling Court: a portrait I’ve dubbed “D-Rod,” since the face of this demon reminds me of a young Alex Rodriguez, aka former major league baseball player “A-Rod.”

The resemblance is probably intentional. For a borough that’s home to the New York Mets, Queens at times seems overflowing with Bronx Bombers followers. Pan’s boyfriend, die-hard Yankees fan Javier Maldonado, would no doubt be pleased with “D-Rod’s” presence in Queens; Pan and her best friend, Sheena McCarthy, on the other hand, being Metsies, would be looking for a bulldozer to borrow so they could knock down the wall…

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places!

Horror Street: The Brooklyn Vampire

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Even though we’re all hunkered down these days, staying in place and self-isolating from the constant threat of the coronavirus, there are still chances for yours truly to exit the offices of ’Warp Central and wander the deserted streets of SWC’s home borough of Queens, New York.

On one such journey this past weekend, I crossed into the industrialized section of a neighborhood in Brooklyn called East Williamsburg, in search of graffiti art to photograph. I’m not much of a fan of tag art, although some of it can be extremely intricate in its design, but I love finding fully rendered murals.

That’s where I came across this stunning lady vampire piece on a corrugated metal fence. Click to embiggen, as they say:

BklynVampire-April2020

The face looks familiar, maybe from a movie poster or something that was used for reference, but I can’t place it. Can you?

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places!