Julia's Mexico City

*though some folks call it a nuisance.

When I was in Puebla, you may recall I learned who Banksy was from Paddy. While I was in London, I saw three actual Banksy...um...installations? The first one I couldn't get a picture of (and couldn't find it on his website) but across from my bus stop in the morning was this one:

Then after dinner with Paddy and his lovely wife, he showed us this one near his house:
(The handwritten portion is not part of Banksy's work.)


Then Kurt and I were in Paris for a few days and within a few blocks of our hotel we saw these three...um...installations. (This one is particularly funny/relevant since it is of a mexican wrestler type -- ¡Lucha Libre!)




If I owned property and found stuff like this on that property would I be mad? I don't know, I guess it depends on what it was. Scrawled tags definitely turn me off, but these stenciled, more graphically designed images are interesting to me. I'm a fan of outdoor public visuals. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was blown away by the billboards. I loved them. It made me feel like I was in a city after growing up in essentially a small country town. I still love well done, well thought out billboards. I also love the advertising in the undergrounds in London and Paris. They can be crap, as all advertising can be, but sometimes they can be genius.