Less than a day after it was reported that a street artist replaced a “White Castle” sign with “White Hassle,” the clever work has been taken down. Brooklyn-based interventionist Gabe Specter changed the letters on the vacant building’s front with his own poignant ones, Gothamist reported.
At the time, it doesn’t cause much fanfare. “I scouted out the place first to make sure everything would fit,” he told DNAinfo. “Then I literally carried my sign over from my house.”
And no one seemed bothered as it went up. From Gothamist:
“No one was ever concerned about what I was putting up. They kept coming up to me wondering what’s going on, instead of bothering to look at [the White Hassle sign],” he said. Passersby seemed thrilled with the idea of something new being built in the now derelict space. “A guy pulled up in a Porsche Cayenne and stood there, staring at me.”
As of Wednesday morning, however, the sign was gone.
Specter’s “White Hassle” sign was meant to be a commentary on the rapid change he’s seen in Clinton Hill over the past several years. The building will soon house five stories of residential condos by Canadian architect Karl Fischer, one of Fischer’s multiple properties in the neighborhood.
“I think, like all my work, it has a satirical angle to it. It’s just a commentary on what’s happening in the neighborhood,” Specter told Gothamist. “You can call it gentrification, you can call it anything you want. This consistent change is happening everywhere.”
(Photo: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)
