Tag Archives: confession

Last night I climbed to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge and planted a pair of white flags

Last night, while everyone was asleep, I snuck out of my house in Astoria and rode my bike over to the Brooklyn Bridge. My goal was straightforward: to climb all the way up and plant a pair of white flags at the top. And I did it. Everybody’s talking about it, on the Internet, on the news.

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I’d been meaning to climb to the top of the Queensboro Bridge ever since I saw Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. But upon executing my plan, I figured that the Brooklyn Bridge is definitely more iconic, and thus a better target for mass media attention.

At first I wanted to just keep it to myself, my own little joke, I’d hear people talking about who could have pulled off such an incredible feat, and I’d laugh to myself, ha, you fools, if only you knew that it was me, that I’m standing right here.

But the spotlight is too great to ignore. I find myself compelled to confess to the world, to the Internet, that it was me. I did it. Nobody else. If anybody else comes forward and says that it was they who did it, they’re lying, and I’m telling the truth.

My reasons are myriad. I originally got the idea when I saw a post on reddit a few days ago celebrating the anniversary of the moon landing. I thought about the flag that the astronauts placed on the surface, and I remembered how I read something somewhere that said that by now, the unfiltered solar radiation would have bleached all of the pigment away. So that’s why, if you look closely, it’s not a totally white flag, it’s an American flag that I whitewashed, for the whole moon effect.

Pretty cool, right? So yeah, there was that. But I also raised the white flag to represent surrender. As in, we as a society finally have collectively surrender, to everything bad in the world, right, like foreign wars, right, and the Illuminati, they don’t want you to hear about these flags, right, and the media, man, we’ve got to, like, stand up, OK, like to the media.

No I’m just kidding, it’s not about anything political. I just wanted to show everybody that I’m capable of climbing up to the top of a New York City bridge. I tell people all the time, stuff like, “I really could do it, I’m in great shape, I’m not even trying to mess around here, I could totally pull it off.” And people don’t want to listen to that sort of nonsense.

No, they want to see it. You’ve got to speak with your actions instead of your words. Which is why I did it. And nobody even saw me coming, or tried to stop me. I’m like that guy who climbed to the top of the New York Times building a few years ago, or the two guys that copied him later that week. I hope people start copying me. I hope I started a trend here, of people climbing up to bridges and planting flags.

Well, I guess I don’t have anything more to say, not really. Just know that it was me. OK world? It was me, Rob G. I climbed up to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I planted those flags. It was like one giant leap for a man. Me. Literally. On my way down, someone knocked over the ladder I used to reach the very bottom, and so I had to jump down like twelve feet. It was a giant leap, and I’d never attempted anything like that before, but I remember watching some YouTube video a while ago of some kids in the Midwest that used a rolling technique to safely jump from the roofs of their garages. And so I executed those giant leaps from memory. And it worked. I did it. Me.

I am Banksy

I’m a little late to the game here, but I just found out about Banksy. Like, I had heard the name Banksy before, but that was about it, I never asked myself, who is Banksy? Why do I keep seeing his name popping up on the Internet? I never clicked through any of those links. And then a couple of weekends ago my brother was talking about Banksy and, not wanting to feel out of the loop, I did my best to pretend like I knew exactly what I was talking about, all while trying to steer the conversation toward another topic.

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But now I know about Banksy. I mean, I still haven’t clicked on any links, but I get it, he’s a graffiti artist. He made some sort of a documentary. And nobody knows who he is. He’s like Batman, but without any of the crime-fighting. Actually, if you think about it, he’s actually a part of the problem, defacing public space.

Whatever, I’m not going to get into an argument about right and wrong. Even though I think that’s it wrong. Not that he’s doing it, but that it didn’t work for me. I heard that this guy was making millions of dollars, this whole mystery artist walking around town drawing little pictures of miniature men next to fire hydrants, I don’t get the appeal, of the art that is, I do get the appeal of the cash.

That’s why it appealed to me. That’s why I tried to get out there and tell everybody that I was Banksy. It made perfect sense, I mean, this guy doesn’t reveal his identity, and so I figured that all I had to do was study his drawings enough to make my own convincing Banksy-style replicas, and instead of fleeing into the shadows after I finished a piece, I’d turn around, I’d be wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of sunglasses, I’d wait for the crowd to get really big, I’d even call the cops on myself, I’d be like, “Hello, police? There’s some guy spray-painting graffiti …” and then just as they’d come to handcuff me, I’d rip off the sweatshirt, I’d be wearing a t-shirt that said, “Banksy!” just, you know, to really drive home the point, and I’d scream out, “It’s me! I’m Banksy!”

But getting a crowd to gather, it’s not as easy as just wearing a bunch of clothes from Urban Outfitters and crouching down to tag a building. No, and I was just testing the waters, just kind of taking out the cans, I hadn’t even started painting yet, but nobody was looking at me, nobody stopped and said, “Are you Banksy?” No, not with the paint cans lined up in front of me, not when I started aggressively shaking the cans up and down, over and over again, each time the metal ball inside of the can hit the end I heard it as, “Bank – sy – Bank –sy.”

And finally, he wasn’t a cop, but he was some sort of a security guard, he came outside of the building and stood like a foot away from me. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to, he was just staring right at me, he had his security guard radio in his hand. It was like he was waiting for me to make a move. Well, a move further than just shaking the can up and down.

This went on for like a minute or two, finally I stopped shaking this one can, I held it out in front of me and slowly took off the top. The security guard remained unmoved, just watching me. I thought, OK, a game of chicken, huh? It’s not like this guy was a real cop or anything, and so I was game. I brought the can slowly to the wall, really slowly, like if this guy was going to make a move, I wanted to see just where that line was. But nothing. Maybe this guy was a fan. Maybe he would be the first person to witness me successfully steal the Banksy name.

Something had to happen, so finally I was like two inches away from the wall, and I made the smallest spray, I had the nozzle pressed down for less than a second. And that was it, the security guard wasn’t a fan, he kicked into action, that radio was out and he was shouting something, vandalism, graffiti, call the police. I panicked, I dropped the can, I didn’t even have a minute to pick anything up, I just screamed out, “I am Banksy!” as I booked it out of there.

And like three blocks, four blocks away, nobody was following me, I thought, if this guy’s really anonymous, how is he so rich? What if the police come and they dust my spray-paint can for prints, do I have to have my fingerprints already in the system to be identified? Should I commit some small infraction so the cops can link me to the paint? Could this still work out in my favor?

But then I thought about buying more spray-paint, about how it was so annoying the first time around, I went to this auto-parts store, all of the spray-paint was behind this cage on aisle seven, and I had to have a manager come out from around the back to unlock it. He was so impatient, he was just like, “Pick a color so I can get back to my job,” and I just wanted a minute, to think about which one I should buy, and this guy was so pushy, so I just chose like a royal blue, a sun-kissed yellow. I don’t know, I don’t really feel like going back, spending more money. I’ll just let Banksy be Banksy, for now, I guess.