Seven Years with Banksy (2 page)

It’s a serious job, as anyone who has been a cycle courier will tell you, and the reward is certainly not the money, although it’s enough to get by on. The reward is getting to know
the city. You are granted instant access to a multitude of places and faces that are strictly off-limits to the general public. It was dangerous out there; cold, wet and hard, and that was even
before you started working, but the other couriers were brothers in arms and slowly the city revealed itself to me.

One winter afternoon I was belting up the Avenue of the Americas on the bike when Keef, the boss of the Carlton Hotel, shouted out to me from the sidewalk. I screeched to a
halt in the slush. It turned out he had also been a cycle courier for some years so he had the camaraderie in spades. He was psyched to see me doing what he used to do and it turned him onto me
more than our previous encounter and he mentioned there might be some night shifts available at the hotel if I was still interested. I told him I was and gave him a contact number. It wasn’t
long after that I got a phone call and I was invited over to the Carlton to be trained up in the art of the night porter. Soon I had enough shifts to leave the courier’s slog behind me. The
refrain from E.S.G.’s tune ‘Uptown downtown, you’ve got to turn your life around’ began to leave my head.

I started to do eighteen-hour shifts at the Carlton Hotel. It was excruciating to be woken at 3 a.m. by some drunken bum
who wanted a bed for the night, but on the whole it
was an easy number, even though I worked alone at night. Foreign tourists had started to show up and use the hotel and it was interesting to talk to the international clientele.

The bolloxed and banjaxed folks that passed through the doors was worthy of a book in itself: there were the crack-smokers and -dealers who we would try to screen but some would fool us with a
straight appearance; there were the assortment of whores of both sexes who came in with their customers to turn a quick trick, and then there were regular people who happened upon us on account of
the good rates. Finally, there were the artists who would usually stop over one at a time and there would be a break before another showed up. These individuals were nearly always impressive and
worth getting to know.

The centre of operations was a tiny office, full of junk and odd artefacts with an
even smaller room off to the side that had a bunk in it (and a baseball bat) where you
could hopefully catch some sleep in the early hours when it could get quiet. It was one of the most pleasant parts of the job to invite a guest into the office and have a cup of tea and shoot the
breeze.

After a few months one of the day managers mentioned that we had an English artist staying for a tour of duty and that he was from Bristol. ‘You’re from Bristol aren’t
you?’ he said.

I looked forward to meeting this person. Lo and behold, one fine morning, bleary-eyed as I was, there stood before me a guy by the name of Robin. He was framed in the office door and a radiant
light was coming off him... no, not really! There he was, framed in the door and he just looked at me with a nonchalant expression.

He didn’t say anything so I said, ‘All right?’ He nodded and I spoke again and said, ‘You must be the one from Bristol?’ He
nodded again but
didn’t communicate much else. He was just there. ‘Is there something you want?’ I asked. He had some personal effects in the little safe, so I gave them to him and he said,
‘See ya,’ turned and walked off. ‘Oh,’ I thought and got on with what I needed to get on with at that time of the morning like turfing out the bums before 10 a.m. and
getting the books square.

So that was our first meeting and it makes me smile because that non-committal long gaze thing is him through and through. He isn’t very forthcoming.

A brief description: he is quite tall but not overly so, he is slim and slightly gangly. His dress sense isn’t really together. His clothes didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t
trying to concoct a look or identify with some youth code. It was nondescript. The guy was a crow, he didn’t stand out, or in; you just wouldn’t notice him. He could blend in or out at
will as if he had an invisibility cloak. This was my fundamental impression when I look
back at those three short minutes when I first clapped eyes on him. To be that way
requires some magic spell or something and I don’t think he was conscious of that effect – he was born with it. This is the first clue to how he’s managed to go so long
undetected. And long may it continue.

After that first inauspicious meeting I can’t say I looked forward to seeing him again. He was just there, in the hotel, doing his thing and it was my job to keep an eye on him.

So I was doing my shifts on reception, often eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ‘New York Super Fudge Chunk’, while this new artist would come and go through the foyer. It
wasn’t an open reception. We had bullet/baseball bat-proof security glass fronting the office with a space to speak through, just in case of any antisocial behaviour so often displayed by
disenfranchised New Yorkers. But we did have a door, naturally, and that was usually open.

Robin and I started to nod at each other from day to day but usually he would just pass by, quite rapidly. ‘What have I done to offend him?’ I thought, although
in truth this was really my least concern. He knew I was English, but we English are very cautious of each other, especially when we’re abroad. Rather than a chummy acceptance of another
Englishman, it is usually a long-winded process of just getting to know each other a little at first. Where this foolishness comes from is anybody’s guess but there it is – English
reticence – yet when we do connect it is usually solid and lasting.

I knew he knew I was English, but maybe he didn’t know I was from Bristol, so I decided to go up to his room uninvited and introduce myself properly.

One evening I made my way up to Robin’s room. There was an appointed time when I shut the street doorway at night and then I would walk the hallways,
just to make sure there was no anti-social trash hanging about. I would do this a few times each night and early morning. As I came towards his room there was the usual smell of paint and the door
was shut so I knocked. There was no response from inside so I opened the door a little and stuck my head through the gap.

‘All right?’ I broached.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. So I stepped inside.

The place was a wreck: paint all over the place and stuff everywhere, but on the walls something was coming together, including the ceilings and doors. Odd, cartoonish, fiendish-looking
creatures were beginning to peek out in broad outlines and bright colours. It was like a Gremlins toy town manifesting through the walls. So this is
what he does, I thought. I
didn’t comment much but said ‘Hey, looks all right.’ ‘Yeah,’ he said.

I didn’t feel exactly welcome but I sat on the floor and relaxed. He was working and you know what these artists are like, so I settled back a bit and just started to chat a little,
talking a bit about Bristol and whatever but it was pretty quiet generally and I watched him work. The atmosphere became warmer as the minutes passed. He was very busy, immersed in his work. After
a while I realized I had been in there for over an hour. It had been nice to sit there, trying to figure the newcomer out, seeing him in action, but I had to go and sort the laundry and answer the
phones and do the books and be around for the residents so I took off.

His artwork looked like fun but it wasn’t as serious or avant-garde as the usual stuff that got done in the rooms. Mind you, some of the rooms had been done out so heavily that it was
depressing to go into them, and
some had such explicit sexual references it made you wonder what sort of behaviour was demanded of you if you stayed there. One room was full of
depictions of car crashes and flowers and that really got to my mum when she stayed in it. So Robin’s room was definitely staking out its own ground. It wasn’t traditional graffiti as
some might expect. It was something else, like the Wacky Races with a macabre tone. I liked it but it didn’t particularly challenge you in any way and I wondered how the hotel became
interested in him. It almost didn’t seem to fit the place.

Ah well, just another visiting artist, I thought. I also figured he might not be around that long as the usual artist tenancy was a couple of months at most. Although he was British, there were
no real gestures of friendship and as he was quite aloof, I just let it be.

As time went by though, I would invite him into the office for a cup of tea and the English reticence thing started to melt a
little and mutual acknowledgement became more
regular. His room was coming along and he had started to occasionally bring around some people he was hanging out with. They looked like proper New Yorkers and lacked any pretentious airs that are
sometimes common among creative people. Little parties began to take place in his room and when I was walking the halls in the evenings, the door was often open and I would pop in and have a beer,
meet his associates and take in the advancing jungle world that was appearing on his walls.

I think he was testy with me because I actually just worked there, ‘a member of the staff’, and we hadn’t crossed into a space of mutual trust that you need to let people in.
The reality was I didn’t give a damn about how crazy it got in the hotel. I liked the madness and insanity of the place. And in contrast with the vomit-soaked rooms and firearms his vibe was
quite chilled out and cosy, if a little standoffish.

A young blonde girl attached to him showed up on the scene and you just had to look at her to see she was wild and spiky. She was on the punky-street side, and chased after
him like a young puppy with her tailwagging. You could feel their energy before you saw them coming in off the street clutching bottles of American Sudsy beer wrapped in brown paper bags.

Late one warm summery night I noticed she was in his room and there was a lot of high-pitch screeching going on that sounded like a heated argument. I hadn’t seen her come in with him, or
on her own. The street door was locked, as it usually was at such an hour. I’m not sure if he saw me pass by on my rounds as his door was ajar, but he came down later and he seemed
exasperated.

‘She climbed up through the fire escape,’ he said, ‘and came in through the window. I had no idea she was coming. She’s crazy; I can’t get rid of her!’
‘Oh yeah?’ I said, and at that moment she came running down
the stairs bouncing around like a toy doll. I’m not sure what she was on, maybe it was natural, but
she became a fixture for a while and I was pleased to see them together.

Robin moved out of the hotel and I didn’t see him for a while. Life went on in New York and I continued on my night shifts and pursued my fancies. One of whom came in the shape of an
attractive young Swedish girl. I couldn’t help but notice a new energy in the hotel when four Swedish girls arrived. Their effervescence was infectious, they turned the heads of even the
oldest residents, especially old Charlie Berg, a veteran of the Second World War who ate his breakfast in the office with me most mornings and who had Swedish heritage. He would mutter and mumble
under his breath when they passed.

They were studying at Parsons, a famous art and design college in Greenwich Village and were soon to move out to an apartment. When one of them left her architectural ruler
at the hotel by accident, I took the chance to invite her to tea with me in the office one balmy afternoon. Soon we started going out so I had a new relationship to occupy my time. Her
name was Johanna.

Soon afterwards Robin showed up and said he had been staying down in South Brooklyn, a place known as Red Hook. I had been down that way a couple of times as I was eager to explore every nook
and cranny of the city. There wasn’t much there to speak of; it was a heavy ghetto basically comprised of African-American-inhabited housing projects. The area was (and still is) hardcore but
not famous like Bedford-Stuyvesant.

I was astounded and thought, ‘What the fuck are you doing down there, man?’ Robin was staying with some people he knew and we got to talking about the place. He told me he had walked
into the local fast-food joint late at night – a soul-food place – and had tried to spark up a conversation with the locals, as you might do in England. He was
met
with a less than welcoming response: the people there just all set their eyes on him with more than a hint of menace. A ‘Who the fuck is this white boy with a fucked-up accent? And what the
fuck is the motherfucker doing here?’ vibe. I had felt the same thing many times while up in Harlem or the Bronx, so I knew what he was talking about. The truth is New York (and America) is a
very segregated land and Britain feels different to that. Robin’s friendly attitude was his Britishness as much as just himself. His genuine openness as opposed to fear or more negative
attitudes is probably what saved him from having his arse kicked around the block. ‘It ain’t like at home,’ he said, ‘like Paul’s or Easton.’ ‘Yeah,’
I agreed. I even had British Caribbean friends in Brooklyn in certain neighbourhoods who would say ‘watch yourself round here mate, it ain’t like England’. I was amazed and
impressed that Robin was living down there and wondered what he was putting up on
the walls and streets and what the Red Hook residents would have thought of his art. They
probably dug it.

I spoke to him about some of the New York neighbourhoods I had experienced and we talked for the longest time so far, and when I look back, this is the point when things started to open up.

From then on we started to hang out together. It wasn’t because we were English or that we had the common connection of Bristol. Far from it. It soon transpired that he was a Bristol City
fan and I am a Bristol Rovers supporter so we were never going to bond over our local football teams. We were Englishmen in New York.

The hotel had offered him the foyer to do out and he took them up on it and became a summer fixture in the place. This time around his work was still leery and on the comic edge but on a grander
scale with scary beasts and monsters lining the walls as if they were residents of the establishment.
It was good fun, sharp and had his unique humour running through it. I
liked it but it didn’t seep into me too much, not like his later work. He was doing this thing and I was there doing my eighteen-hour shifts.