While writing about Banksy [the brilliant but reclusive graffiti artist] for The New Yorker in 2007, Lauren Collins met with Joel Unangst [from whom Banksy once rented a warehouse].
Collins: Unangst can confirm that Banksy often dresses in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. When Unangst is asked what adorns the T-shirts, he will allow, before fretting that he has revealed too much already, that they are covered with smudges of white paint...
I asked Unangst what more he could tell me about Banksy, and he replied, “The only thing I can say is he’s like everybody, but he’s like nobody.” And so began the koan of Banksy... [Later] Unangst wandered behind the warehouse, toward what looked like a rusted-out paddy wagon. It was parked against a wall. Banksy had tagged the side that was obscured with a pixillated Dorothy, from “The Wizard of Oz,” a noose in her outstretched hand. I wrote down a phone number from a painted decal—“How’s My Bombing [slang for graffitiing in the UK]?”—on the truck’s bumper, hoping that it might offer a hint about the Banksy mystery. It connected to a Navy recruiting station in Arizona...
Sources
New Yorker, May 14, 2007, p. 58
