When Banksy Came to Red Hook and Made His Mark
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll find out about what happened to a 7,500-pound chunk of a wall with a Banksy installation from 2013. We'll also get details on a request from Mayor Eric Adams's lawyer for a federal judge to hurry a decision on whether to drop corruption charges against the mayor.
A dark-colored van parked down the block from Vassilios Georgiadis's nondescript warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, one evening in 2013. Georgiadis, a roofing and asbestos abatement contractor, noticed it because he was standing outside, smoking.
He told the man who got out of the van that it was not a good idea to leave it in that spot. Tractor-trailers turning the corner too fast could clip the car, Georgiadis said.
The man said he would not be there long. He said something about how he just wanted to run to a convenience store nearby for cigarettes and coffee. Georgiadis told him to pull into an empty space in the driveway outside the warehouse. The man did and headed off. The van was still there when Georgiadis left a little while later.
Georgiadis worked at home the next day, and then took some paperwork to his son Anastasios, who spent the day on a roofing job on Staten Island, ignoring calls from his mother.
When quitting time came and he dialed her number, she told him about calls from reporters who said that the elusive graffiti artist Banksy had put a heart-shaped balloon on the wall of the Brooklyn warehouse. The balloon was covered with bandages.
'I had heard about Banksy,' Anastasios Georgiadis said. 'I heard he was going around putting up pieces all around the city.'
Even so, 'it did not immediately click' that Banksy must have been the man his father saw the day before. But once Anastasios Georgiadis drove by the warehouse and saw a crowd looking at the balloon, he figured that Banksy had installed the heart after his father had gone home.
'I had freshly painted that wall,' Anastasios Georgiadis said. 'I had a lot of people's graffiti on that wall' — the work of taggers less exalted than Banksy. 'Doing business, people see that, they don't like that, so I painted it over,' he said, adding that when Banksy came upon the big, blank wall, 'I guess he saw an opportunity.'
At the time, Banksy was several days into a monthlong project called 'Better Out Than In,' which involved putting up new installations around the city. People who saw Banksy's works as targets soon found the heart in Red Hook. News accounts said that in all, graffiti artists had tagged it five times. As the crowd watched, a man in a white hoodie painted the tag 'Omar NYC' next to the heart and walked away. Anastasios Georgiadis said the crowd booed.
He then hired 'bodyguards,' he said, to control the crowd and protect the Banksy.
'There were so many people, I put Plexiglas over it,' Anastasios Georgiadis said. 'Someone tried to smash it with a sledgehammer. It was a neighbor of ours. He didn't like the commotion, how everybody was there taking pictures.' He said the guards 'got in the middle and took the sledgehammer away from him.'
Before long, Anastasios Georgiadis came up with a plan to remove a section of the wall with the heart intact. That 9-foot-by-6-foot chunk will be displayed in the Winter Garden atrium at Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan starting April 21. The auction house Guernsey's will sell it a month later. Some of the money will go to the American Heart Association in tribute to Vassilios Georgiadis, who died of a heart attack in January 2021.
The chunk of the wall has been in a climate-controlled warehouse in New York since 2014, after a private sale did not pan out, Anastasios Georgiadis said.
And the warehouse? It was demolished several years ago when he and a partner were looking to build an apartment building with street-level storefronts. That project got as far as the foundation. He said he had sold the project recently.
Expect a sunny and breezy day, with the temperature in the high 50s. In the evening, expect a clear sky, with the temperature dipping to around 36.
Suspended for Idul-Fitr (Eid al-Fitr)
The latest Metro news
Adams's lawyer asks a judge for a speedy ruling
One of Mayor Eric Adams's lawyers wants the judge who could dismiss the federal corruption charges against him to hurry up.
The lawyer, Alex Spiro, cited the Thursday deadline to file petitions for Adams's name to appear on the Democratic mayoral primary ballot in June. Spiro noted that the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the charges had been pending before the judge, Dale Ho, since mid-February. He quoted the judge's own words from a February court hearing: 'It's not in anyone's interest here for this to drag on.'
Last year, the mayor pleaded not guilty to the five charges he faces, which include bribery and wire fraud, and his trial was scheduled to start on April 21. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan had pursued the case aggressively.
But after President Trump was elected, his administration reversed course, asking Judge Ho to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning that the charges could be reinstated. The mayor courted Trump after the election in November and promised to cooperate with the president's crackdown on immigration. But he denied that the Trump administration agreed to drop the case in exchange for his help with deportations.
The dismissal motion, signed by Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official, ultimately led to the resignations of Danielle Sassoon as the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan and at least seven other prosecutors in New York and Washington, including the lead prosecutor in the case against the mayor.
Because Bove's motion put the Justice Department and Adams in agreement on dropping the case, the judge named an outside lawyer, Paul Clement, to provide independent arguments. Clement recommended that the case be dismissed but 'with prejudice,' meaning the charges could not be brought again.
Service call
Dear Diary:
I called for a repair for my gas oven and was able to arrange a service call for late the next day.
When the technician arrived at my Chelsea apartment, he was very careful to protect the floors. He put paper booties over his shoes while he was in the hall and carried his bulky tool bag into the kitchen rather than rolling it.
He listened patiently to my diagnosis of the problem and to my offers to be helpful.
'I've got this,' he said, politely cutting me off and turning away to get to work.
I went into the other room. About 20 minutes later, he called for me and demonstrated that everything was working before putting the stove back together.
When he was done, he called me back again and explained the warranty. Then, as it was the end of the day and his last call, we started to chat.
He pointed to a Rubik's Cube sitting on my counter and asked whether I minded if he picked it up.
Not at all, I said. I didn't have a clue about how to do it and had acquired it only to see whether I could figure it out.
'I love these things,' he said. He proceeded to inspect, rotate and twirl the sides over and over while I watched.
'See, I've got this side,' he said, 'and now I've got to get this one.'
It took him about eight minutes to finish.
'That's beautiful,' I said. 'Now teach me.'
'No,' he said, shaking his head. 'That would take too long.'
Still, it was a nice bonus to an appliance repair service call.
— Tom Sawyer
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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