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An anonymous artist who goes by the alias “Buffalo Pothole Bandit” has come to town to save us from popped tires and ugly streets. The Bandit filled 30 potholes around town in mid-October, including 20 sidewalk cracks and potholes on Southeast Stark Street between 78th and 80th Avenues in Montavilla.
But the Bandit—who would not provide any information about their identity, other than that they live in Buffalo, N.Y., and has no formal art background—isn’t just pouring some quick-dry asphalt mix into the potholes: they make elaborate and whimsical mosaics in the cement. In Portland, they made an airport carpet-themed design, as well as a tiny milk-and-cookies pothole fix and a ladybug wearing a crown. They also created a nice blue swirl in Southeast Portland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, and a Buffalo Bills logo near Tinker Tavern, a Bills bar.
It’s not an elaborate awareness campaign about shoddy infrastructure; the Bandit just likes sharing art and jokes with people and being helpful. (They also say Portland’s sidewalks are in remarkably good condition compared to Buffalo’s, but that our side streets could use some help.)
The Portland Bureau of Transportation would not comment on the guerrilla art pothole movement because sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of adjacent property owners, not the city.
The Bandit planned to come to town next year but read about President Donald Trump’s attempted National Guard deployment to Portland and decided to come early.
“I decided to come this year and share some whimsy to help boost morale.”
The Bandit has mostly worked in the New York area but came out to Portland specifically to pay homage to our city’s Sidewalk Joy movement. That’s a yearslong project by Rachael Harms Mahlandt that encourages people to set up sidewalk art installations in their yards, like Harms Mahlandt’s dinosaur exchange in Montavilla. Harms Mahlandt helped the Bandit set up a Sidewalk Joy project in Buffalo, they say.
The Bandit relies on small donations to do their art and hopes to save up enough money to return to the Rose City again. A detailed map of their Portland art is available here.
“I just want to put art in new and unexpected places,” the Bandit says in an email. “I also like showing people that there is value in taking care of your community and that it can be fun. You don’t always have to wait for the city to fix something. Sometimes you can do it yourself faster.”
