Gourmet Graffiti
On my block, Benny’s Gourmet Pizza has a fully covered wall of graffiti on its side. It was commissioned by the pizzeria owners themselves; you can tell because of the little painted man holding a pizza box for delivery, as well as the other man furiously blowing on his pizza slice. I’m not too sure how many years it has been there, but I do remember the wall being empty at some point. The artist was commissioned to decorate the wall in order to draw attention to the pizzeria and distinguish it from the many other pizzerias in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. It’s a perfect canvas for graffiti art, being large and rectangular. Since it’s graffiti, it’s not guaranteed that it will be there or stay intact forever, but so far no one has drawn over it or ruined it in any way.
The colors are vivid and the style is cartoonish, which I think is very eye-catching for people strolling past. The piece takes up the entire wall, which is around 20-30 feet in length. It seems random and strangely placed (in comparison to the brightly-colored wall, the houses and buildings radiating from it are blandly colored) in the neighborhood, but I think that that is what makes it great. I always find myself looking at it as I pass by on the way to the train station, and I ALWAYS mean to take a photo of it with my phone, but I guess I take it for granted and say that I’ll “take it later”. This assignment is good because I have finally taken that photo.
