Banksy vs. me

This weekend I went to Bristol, a city of half a million people two hours west of London that used to be an important slave trading port in the dark ages. These days, the city is more likely to emphasize its cultural achievements (Wallace and Gromit, Massive Attack, the Arnolfini), though Edward Colston's name still (dis)graces many buildings.

I had come for art of a particular kind, the kind that normally graces walls before it gets painted over mercilessly. Banksy, the famously anonymous graffiti artists, comes from Bristol, and his stenciled pieces have shown up on more and more walls since city authorities relented to public opinion and didn’t remove the lucky escape at the Sexual Health Clinic on Park Street, which I had seen on an earlier trip. After an inspired Google Maps search, we spent Saturday chasing around town in search of murals, and saw a good handful. It was exhilarating, like a treasure hunt.

Sunday was supposed to be a day at the museum. At the City Museum, more precisely, where Banksy vs. Bristol Museum has been going on for the last three months. The exhibition, and with it the official recognition of Banksy by the city of Bristol, had arrived out of nowhere. In June, the museum closed for three days, for filming, as the public and non-essential staff were told. When the doors opened again, a bomb of creativity and irreverence had detonated in the venerable halls of the museum, and nothing was as it had been. The exhibition is free, and crowds have been lining up since the first day. Those that could be bothered to wait for an hour during the first month now grudgingly do so for three or four. There's only one more week before the exhibition closes.

On Saturday night, we went to a milonga in town and found out, incidentally, that on Sundays no buses run to the place where we were staying with friends, half an hour outside of town. Our friends were ready to drive us but not at the hour that we would have liked. Eight would have been nice, but when you don’t get back home before two, that’s a lot to ask even of good friends. We bargained them down to ten.

At half past eleven, we were dropped off in a side street near the museum, at the end of a long line of people buzzing with anticipation. A member of the museum staff, grim and sullen in his black uniform, welcomed us and told us that the sign we could see half a block down the road denoted the point from which the wait was expected to be five-and-a-half hours. Last admission would be at 4:30. He didn’t encourage us to stay.

We didn’t budge immediately. The force of the disappointment had made us momentarily motionless. We got absorbed in the crowd and weighed our options. Should we stay or should we go. On the one hand was a day strolling through an attractive city with charming historic quarters, was the opportunity to admire the glorious Clifton Suspension Bridge not drenched in rain, were coffee shops waiting for our business. On the other hand was the faint possibility of seeing a street artist confined in a museum.

Even if the artist had chosen to confine himself, the decision was relatively easy to make. After a dark five minutes spent grieving in line, feeling as if a deer friend has just departed, we put on our happy faces and sauntered off into the sunny afternoon. In Banksy vs. me, the score was 1:0, but the game wasn’t over yet. There’s still a week to go, and some spontaneous craziness on my part might yet happen.