Fishtown Buffer Turns Into Meme: No Art in the City is Safe!
It’s like a story out of a really bad independent movie (filmed on, like, no budget): random man decides to paint over what he thinks is graffiti in Fishtown. Random man doesn’t realize that the “graffiti” is the Kurt Vile mural, a commissioned piece of art by Steve Powers. Instagram blows up with pictures of said random man defacing the mural. Random man caught red-handed.
Our coverage this weekend of this strange series of events turned, well, even stranger: a man, who identified himself as “Dumb Buffer,” issued an apology to the painter on our website. It turns out “Dumb Buffer” is actually DJ Lee Mayjahs; local Philly writer Leah Kauffman confirmed his identity. Mayjahs claimed to be quite remorseful of his actions and went so far as to call himself a “moron.”
Nevertheless, Philly Instagramers couldn’t let this one go. Clearly, as evidenced by the pictures below, quite a few people feel like no art in the city is safe:
We reached out to the artist, Steve Powers; as of this publication, we haven’t received a response. However, there’s an Instagram post circulating that claims to be a quote from Powers, summarizing his feelings on the entire situation:
