VBS.TV Blog

I DESTROYED BANKSY’S RAT

November 18, 2009
by LILAS GREEN

A long time ago I lived in an old London warehouse with a guy called Steve, who was a questionable character and a cocktail of mental illnesses. Steve and I were both penniless; I worked full-time for a respectable fashion label but got awful pay for incredible PR, sales, and marketing skills, whereas Steve was a bum and deserved to be broke. On the outside of our building, near our front door, was some graffiti: a Banksy rat. The most famous of Banksy’s work, the one in all the coffee table books, the one that drew in hipster tourists every day to photograph it. I liked the rat. It made me smile a little each morning as I left the house.

One night Steve’s drug dealer came over. He was also some kind of art collector. While snorting blow or some kind of flour mixed with bleach or whatever it is that dirty coke dealers give you now, he started telling Steve and I about how much the small graffiti rat on the side of our building was worth. Then he told us that if we get it off the wall all in one piece he can sell it for us for “about £50,000,” he says. And now I’m thinking, fuck, I could live off that money for a long time. I could be one of those people who gets their hand blown off when the printer in the office explodes and gets a lump sum of compensation money, except I don’t even have to have a fucked-up hand: I just have to sell out and be a bad person. At the time that sounded just fine.

Read the rest at viceland