On Sunday my friend Eugene and I ventured into the Lower East Side in NYC with hopes of finding some artwork by the famous street artist known to the public by the name of Banksy. We began our search in Soho with maps and photos on our phones that pointed to locations of Banksy’s art. The first place we went to Allen Street and Canal where we expected to see our first find. But all we found was a large wall where Banky’s graffiti has already been painted over.

Next we made our way to Canal Street and east Broadway but again we had no luck. All we found was the wall of a small city cafe where the brick pattern matched the one on the picture on our map but again – no artwork. Around the corner, however, we found an interesting chalk drawing on the sidewalk. We concluded that it was meant to be an outline of a bicycle parked by the pole with the sun overhead around midday. Here’s what we saw:

Although we no luck finding Banksy work yet we strolled around the streets on the lower East Side and discovered lots of street art that we found to be incredibly interesting, sophisticated, and even beautiful. Here are some of the most interesting works:

This particular work commented on the popular tales like Alice in Wonderland and Snow White. It questioned whether Alice was on an innocent adventure or a psychedelic drug trip. It also portrayed Snow White as a black woman and the original Snow White character as carrying the Prince, which might be a comment on gender roles:

The picture of Snow White as a black woman was particularly interesting because it drew attention to the nature of traditional children’s stories where the princesses and the beauties are almost always white:

After walking around for quite some time we had an unexpected run of good luck! We accidentally stumbled upon this picture. The style closely resembled Banksy’s work and yet the tag read “Nick Walker.” As it turns out, Nick Walker is an established graffiti artist who introduced the stencil graffiti style in 1980’s and served as Banksy’s inspiration in most of his projects:

As we walked to our next destination we saw an odd display that consisted of a panel of old jeans and two other panels with paint splattered on them. I found the use of textures on the panels interesting and different from everything we’ve seen:

At the next address we found a construction site where we though was another one of Banksy’s creations. As we looked at the picture on our map we realized that it was taken and uploaded only a few days ago but it was on a truck with graffiti on it that was parked in this site…and of course the truck was no longer there. The picture we took matched the one on our map, minus the truck:

But turns out we weren’t the only ones looking in this spot Banksy’s work. In front of the gates someone left a poster that read something like”Banksy is….” It was hard to tell:

We made our way to Bowery and Delancey Street and finally, there it was: one of Banksy’s graffiti works! “The Musical.” Not exactly what we set out to find but it was great to finally find something!

Lastly, at the end of our day we made our way back to Broadway and the more known streets of Soho. There were a few people with stands on the street selling different things. They were mostly street vendors with handmade jewelry, small leather goods, knock off sunglasses and other miscellaneous items. One vendor had an interesting display set up in front of his stand:

“Seat savers.” I have to give him credit, it looks very real! We walked over to talk to him and asked him about what he was selling. “It’s functional art,” he said. I had to smile thinking how well this connected with the whole day exploring city streets and unconventional art in New York City. The idea for these items came from a man who held a shop for film and theater set props and was going out of business. Then he came up with the idea of seat savers….and now he’s still in business. At least that was the story the vendor told us. Here are some more examples:

So overall, although we only found one of Banksy’s creations, we made a day out of it and had a pretty interesting time wandering around city streets.