the follow-up

Is This the Splasher?

Earlier this month, New York’s Sam Anderson looked at the curious case of the Splasher, the anonymous vandal who was destroying some of the city’s best “street art” — that’s a highfalutin term for fancy graffiti — with aggressive splashes of paint and wheatpasted pseudo-Marxist posters decrying the creeping gentrification of the street-art scene. Anderson talked to lots of prominent street artists, a number of the Splasher’s victims, and several potential Splashers. He never quite fingered the true Splasher, but he ended the piece with a strong candidate: an anti-capitalist named Zac. The other day, the city blog Gothamist — run by Jake Dobkin, one of Anderson’s first suspects — received a Unibomber-like manifesto from the Splasher, and subsequently fingered the bad guy as one Zach Dempster. We’d explain more, but, frankly, it all confuses us.

The Splasher Speaks [Gothamist]

Is This the Splasher?