Billy Leroy posed next to the increasingly punished Shepard Fairey mural on E. Houston St. last Wednesday. As Leroy was telling The Villager how some “drunken ‘Euro’ guy in a blazer” started the most recent round of assaults on the wall, a loud thumping sound came from down the block. “Hey, get off my wall!” Leroy yelled at a gangly, bearded man with long, brown hair and glasses, who had been kicking the Fairey mural. The dude ducked around the corner onto Bowery, only to reappear a minute later to give the mural a few more emphatic back kicks, and scowl at Leroy. The antiques dealer, whose tent is next to the beaten-up billboard, said some graffiti heads feel the art-school-educated Fairey is a sellout. But, he said, if any street artist was offered the money, he or she would gladly take it. “And he’s the only one with a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery,” Leroy noted of Fairey, creator of the iconic Obama “HOPE” poster. The “Dirty Old Town” star worried that the nails on the insides of the now-exposed metal studs are razor sharp. Also increasingly exposed are the yellow fantastical faces and scenes from the Os Gemeos mural underneath.
