If colorful ceramic tiles are your medium and potholes are your canvas, where better to create art than New Orleans?
The Crescent City’s reputation for bumpy, pockmarked streets is ultimately what called the renowned Buffalo Pothole Bandit to town. Hailing from Buffalo, New York, the anonymous street artist travels the U.S. in search of holes and cracks that need filling, packing them with concrete inlayed with colorful mosaics of tiles, beads, letters and found objects.
With nearly 18,000 followers on Instagram, the Bandit has renovated potholes from Oregon to Tennessee, gaining so much notoriety and media attention along the way, they spent a stint stumping for Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan — all without revealing their true identity. The artist goes to great lengths to remain anonymous, sometimes appearing in videos in a raccoon mask, partly because the legality of vigilante pothole filling is fuzzy in many localities.
The Bandit’s latest stop was New Orleans, where the artist spent much of the past month filling more than two dozen holes in the city’s streets and sidewalks, leaving hidden messages behind in the asphalt.
Consider this both an affirmation and a reason for hope: While the Bandit confirmed that New Orleans has some of the worst streets they’ve seen, the artist was also witness to at least one government-orchestrated filling.
“I actually went to fill a hole I was planning on, and your city filled it,” the Bandit said. “To be clear, I’m not doing this to shame cities or governments.”
A pothole at North Gayoso and Dumaine streets features a colorful play on words. Beagle for scale.
By KASEY BUBNASH | Staff writer
The Bandit’s work was born out of utility but has evolved to frivolity. A pothole outside the artist’s favorite bakery in Buffalo that had been the scene of one too many twisted ankles was the first they ever decided to fill.
“I put some tiles and Scrabble letters in the fill for pizazz, and it went from there,” the Bandit said.
Now the roadway imperfections are canvases that range in size from a crater that could seriously damage a tire to tiny crevasses no longer than an inch or two. The work is funded out of pocket and through donations provided on BuffaloPotholeBandit.com.
In New Orleans, where Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration aims to fill 1,500 potholes a week, even 30 sizable holes filled isn’t going to make a dent in the citywide issue. It’s more like sewing a decorative patch on an angsty teenager’s purposely distressed jeans.
Still, it’s a delight to stumble upon one of these little masterpieces. Particularly when it means you aren’t going to stumble into a pothole.
A sidewalk crack outside Wifey’s Bar is now home to a rainbow fleur-de-lis.
By KASEY BUBNASH | Staff writer
At Wifey’s Bar in the Marigny, owner Bobby Cohen said the Bandit graciously offered to fill two sidewalk holes just outside the LGBTQ bar, one with a rainbow fleur-de-lis and another with a reference to an inside joke at the foot of the bar’s office entryway.
“I tripped on that more times than I’m willing to admit while loaded,” Cohen said.
But aside from the safety benefits, Cohen said he supports any effort to beautify the city.
“I think it’s really nice to be a part of that installation that went around the entire city,” Cohen said. “I’m very grateful that they chose here to put some of that artwork down.”
The Bandit left sprinkles of color behind all across New Orleans, on Magazine Street near St. Joe’s Bar, throughout the Marigny and Bywater and as far as Gretna. You can find all the Bandit’s works on a regularly updated Google map.
On Dumaine Street in Bayou St. John, the Bandit’s creations appear suddenly in the road, cheery pockets of color among a minefield of craters. Most of the mosaics feature references to local culture or nods to the LGBTQ community.
There are jokes in holes on Gayoso Street about it being “oh so gay,” and a green alligator set in purple concrete near Dumaine and North Lopez streets. A few feet away, there’s a mural of a dead truck that a neighbor said has been parked in almost the exact same spot for nearly a decade.
“It contains many found objects as well as actual bits of the truck that have fallen off over the years,” the Bandit said on social media.
The Buffalo Pothole Bandit on social media dedicated this hole to the owner of a truck that has parked in the same Bayou St. John spot for years.
By KASEY BUBNASH | Staff writer
The Bandit loves how excited people get about the mosaics, but they don’t plan to go public anytime soon.
Though DIY pothole décor is nothing new in New Orleans — think the Jim Cantore pothole and the notorious pothole turned swimming pool — it’s not exactly legal. Plus, the artist doesn’t want to be famous.
“I also like being judged on the work itself rather than other aspects of my life,” the Bandit said. “Lastly, people seem to enjoy the character I’ve created and have asked me not to reveal myself. I’m sort of like a comic book hero to them, I think.”
If anyone needs a pothole-filling superhero, it’s New Orleans.