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street stencil artist borf busted

Today's Washington Post reports that Borf, a guerilla stencil artist that I've featured on this blog (February 21, July 2) has been busted. He, with a couple of tagging associates, was arrested yesterday by DC police, after they got an anonymous tip.

Apparently the Post has been talking to the guy for months and now that he's been arrested they can come out and say the name of their latest "Deep Throat": his name is John Tsombikos and he's an 18-year-old artist, currently taking "time off" from classes at the Corcoran School of Art. Not surprisingly, the dude's politics are radical (anarchist) and counter-cultural. And "Borf" was actually a friend of Tsombikos who committed suicide a few years ago. Tsombikos's been tagging in the name of his friend ever since.

And the Post is not the only entity that has been tracking this guy. Hundreds of folks have been, in DC and on both coasts. Photos of his work have been appearing at Flickr.com (search for "borf"--275 photos!), and stencilrevolution.com.

The Post quotes someone as saying that "Citizens are ecstatic about him being caught." That's probably "Yuppies busily gentrifying the city and obsessed about property values are ecstatic about him being caught." There are at least 200 or so people (judging from the photos at flickr) who were intrigued enough by Borf's work to take pictures, and who are probably not that thrilled about an interesting graffiti artist being put out of commission. I know I'm not.

Particularly now that I know there is a whole network of folks who take pictures of and track graffiti/stencil artists (practitioners of "street media"). This is quite an exciting development for me, which I would not know of if I hadn't see the "old media" story, which led me to new media sources (flickr and stencilrevolution).

I particularly admire Borf's escapade on the Roosevelt Bridge, in DC, this Spring, which I totally missed. This is from storker.

I also found a version of something I reported on July 2, but was not able to capture with my camera: the ubiquitous stenciler dressed up in revolutionary garb (as Black Panther Huey Newton, the Post reports). This is from Jake Dobkin, taken in New York City.

It's quite possible that a number of street artists will carry on Borf's campaign while he deals with his legal issues (some have been using his logo anyway to support, and undercut, his campaign). I'll keep my eyes open and check in with photoblogs to see if Borfs keep appearing.

I will also look into the current "Rancor" campaign, which I blogged about on July 2. (Just checked flickr.com--only a couple tags so far. I've seen at least six different "rancor" tags around town). One of the Borf tags, on a park bench, is suspiciously similar to the one I photographed on July 2. We might need a handwriting (or spraypaint-tagging) analysis on this one.

Posted by jeb at July 14, 2005 5:58 PM | TrackBack