While visiting London I had a purpose to find 10 Banksy graffiti among all the other things to do. Because if you happen to be in the capital of the United Kingdom, you just have to see some of the works of this unique street vandal.
After arrival and breakfast I went by the riverside of the Thames and through the yards nearby, searching for rats anarchists and policemen in compromising situations. Nothing. There wasn’t anything anywhere. Only the CCTV security system was silently watching all the streets.

In the evening while waiting for Viktoras I had a free half hour, so I went to the area of Waterloo station, as I had to be able to find at least 15 paintings according to the map of Banksy graffiti locations. I found a cone on top of the roof of an entrance to one of the buildings. That was similar to the style of the famous anonymous, but I had no guaranties about that. And still there were no graffiti as well.

But then I found some stains sprayed through stencils long long ago near a repaired tunnel. That was also similar to what I searched for, but I didn’t understand the content of it.

As far as I talked to the local people, many of them didn’t even know who Banksy was and had never seen any of his works. But the guy who showed me the cool bar called “Polka” at Poland street, also drew and explained some places in the punky Camden Town district, where I could find a couple of famous graffiti, because he had lived there and had passed by those graffiti every day. Unfortunately, I haven’t found one of them – maybe it was covered with some advertisement or hidden behind the new fence painted in blue by some constructors… And there was not enough time to find the next graffito.

Another evening I was walking in the city together with Alla, Justas and others (“I don’t know those friends” © Juozas) and noticed the graffito One Nation Under CCTV which had appeared in the press not long ago. “Cool! I found the first one. What a success!” – I thought. It looked the same as in the photos that I had seen. Oh! It was painted in front of the security cabin at the gate to post or something. Perhaps Banksy has many useful acquaintances.


Any of the searched mushrooms hadn’t come out of the leaves for a while. It might be that most of the graffiti paintings had been washed by the rain or covered with paint for a long time. But then on the last day of the visit I was scrolling about some luxurious streets near the river together with Vita and suddenly I found a kid fishing doses from a bucket. Oh yes! One more find. And this one was quite new. It’s a pity that they were fading so fast.


After returning, I found out that the first stains were a cop sniffing cocaine on the sidewalk. Did somebody recognize that straight away?
To sum up, I passed almost one third of my mission of searches. I am glad about that, although I hoped to find much more of them. What can I say, London is much larger than I have imagined.





