The Return of the Shadowman

A stealth artist from Seattle has been replicating the ’80s street art of Richard Hambleton throughout Manhattan. Is this a tribute, a marketing tool — or both?

He committed his first crime shortly after 2:00 in the morning on a recent Friday. With an athlete’s grace, he hopped a rusty gate and pulled a plastic bottle of black latex paint from his backpack. Then, in broad muscular strokes, he painted a shadowy silhouette of a scraggly man on the glass door beneath an abandoned cafe on West 23rd Street. It took form in 10 minutes, finished when he splattered droplets creating the impression that the brains of the menacing figure’s head were exploding as if from a geyser.

“I just think that door looks better that way,” he told this tagalong reporter who pointed out the police car on the corner. “And now the space is completely transformed.”

A man walking past it admired how the moody silhouette changed the setting. “That looks a lot better than it looked before,” he said to his companion.