I have twice covered the artistic stylings of a certain Brooklyn graffiti tagger who goes by KING BABY (or so I am led to believe from the tags). Last June, I wrote an article about KING BABY written on a truck passing through Gowanus. I returned to Gowanus in December to cover a KING BABY BKF sticker (with eye) and try to get to the bottom of the KING BABY phenomenon. There are so many KING BABY sightings in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, and Columbia Street Waterfront District that few of them are notable enough to feature here in The New Leaf Journal. The King Baby tag that I discovered in Gowanus on February 24, 2022, would not have been worth noting but for some clever commentary appended to the tag.
I removed the color from this KING BABY picture to highlight the sticker that someone added to the piece.
YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID!
Sticker
Did the sticker-placer have enough of the deluge of KING BABY graffiti and stickers? Was the sticker-placer a rival artist challenging KING BABY for the throne of whatever he rules over?
We may never know the answer.
But regardless of why the sticker-sticker struck, I cannot disagree with the sentiment. Graffiti damages communities and costs money to remove or cover over. While KING BABY’s work does not reek as much of urban decay as much of the other graffiti (much less the persistent odor of marijuana) around town – it will still be a pain for someone to remove. This example is a bit worse than Blob Dylan in Bushwick or Uncle Susan is a Wolf on West 9th, much less the KING BABY sticker that I covered in December.
Alas, KING BABY cannot always stick to stickers. This sticker sticker is indeed correct. Sometimes you can’t fix stupid.