Funny, Then It Hits You (8 Photos)

November 14, 2026

By Vidar

The joke lands first

Seven skeletons with seven different labels. A dream stamped CANCELLED. Tiny businessmen standing in a puddle. Each of these works gets a laugh in the first second, and the point lands a moment later.

More: Stencils That Hit Hard (31 Photos)

🏷️ “Labels” — By ItSkeletal in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸

Seven plastic skeletons stand in a row under seven words: White, Black, Straight, Gay, Religious, Atheist and Pirate. Take away the words and they are the same skeleton, except the pirate, who is missing a lower leg.

💡 Bone Fact: ItSkeletal is Manny Julio, who builds his skeleton scenes outside his home in Fogelsville. He told an interviewer that he wanted to put his first display up in July but waited until Halloween.

More: ItSkeletal’s Skeleton Street Art Will Make You Laugh—Then Think

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🚫 “Follow Your Dreams” — By Banksy in Boston, USA 🇺🇸

A tired painter with a bucket has just finished the words FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS, and a red CANCELLED stamp sits right across them. Banksy Explained places the piece on Essex Street in Boston’s Chinatown in May 2010. The dream is written by hand. The cancellation looks official.

💡 Place Fact: The Boston Globe found it on the back of the Shabu Shabu restaurant, next to parking space number 32, the same spring Banksy’s film Exit Through the Gift Shop was the top-grossing film at Cambridge’s Kendall Square Cinema. A manager said the owner had no plans to take it down.

More: Banksy? Who Is The Visionary of Street Art? (25 Photos)

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⌨️ “Keyboard Warrior” — By JPS in Weston-super-Mare, England 🇬🇧

A boy in glasses has a red cape, a sword and a computer keyboard for a shield. JPS posted it in 2018 as a new piece on the Seaton Hotel in Weston. Ready for battle, as long as the battle happens in a comment section.

💡 Word Fact: Cambridge Dictionary defines a keyboard warrior as someone who posts angry messages or likes to get into arguments online. JPS gives the phrase an actual shield.

More: 40 Stunning Street Art By Creative Genius JPS

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🕵️ “Government Spy” — By The Rebel Bear in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland 🇬🇧

A man in a hat hides behind an open newspaper, a bag on the ground beside him, painted right next to a real cash machine on North Junction Street in Leith. It is the oldest spy joke there is, and people still stand beside him to take out cash. The Rebel Bear told Brooklyn Street Art that the piece is “a comment on the current mass surveillance we are under.”

💡 Paper Fact: Read the newspaper. Edinburgh Live reported that it is called The Government Times, that the spy peers through two holes cut in it, and that it refers to phone records, a snooper’s charter, facial recognition and online profiling. The piece is understood to have appeared on July 28, 2021.

More: Government Spy – By The Rebel Bear in Edinburgh

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🦈 “Shark-fin Soup” — By Pejac in Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵

Gray shark fins break through the paving stones of a busy Tokyo street, and nobody looks down. It plays like a cartoon sea monster until you read the title. Pejac told My Modern Met that the anime look is there to camouflage a critique of a much less kind reality: the killing of sharks for their fins.

💡 Bite Fact: Look closely at each fin. Street Art News noted obvious human bites on every one. Pejac told Time Out Tokyo that he put the fins in a square in the middle of Shibuya to show what a shark might feel when threatened by people, not the other way around.

More: Street Art by Pejac – In Tokyo, Japan

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🛑 “Stop Making Stupid People Famous” — By Plastic Jesus in Los Angeles, USA 🇺🇸

No character, no trick, just five red words on a gray pillar by an LA sidewalk. It reads like a wisecrack, and it is hard to argue with. Plastic Jesus now sells the same line on canvas, so the slogan has moved from the sidewalk to living room walls.

💡 Target Fact: The line often gets read as a dig at the Kardashians. Plastic Jesus told The Hollywood Reporter, as quoted by Time, that it is also aimed at us as consumers: without us, there would be no market for them.

More: Plastic Jesus in Los Angeles (6 photos)

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🌊 “Follow the Leaders” — By Isaac Cordal in San Jose, California, USA 🇺🇸

Small cement men in suits stand in a puddle outside a McDonald’s, one holding a briefcase, another already in up to his chin. They look like toys someone forgot in the rain, until you notice the suits. Cordal made the scene in 2013 for his long-running Cement Eclipses project.

💡 Nerd Fact: Cordal’s 2011 Berlin installation The Electoral Campaign, the one the internet calls “Politicians Discussing Global Warming,” was actually part of this same Follow the Leaders series.

More: Collection of Works by Isaac Cordal From 2013

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🛋️ A Room Drawn Around a Mattress — By Skid Robot in Los Angeles, USA 🇺🇸

A TV, a window, a dresser and a birdcage, drawn in black lines on bare concrete above a real mattress. The mattress and the bags beside it are real. VICE describes Skid Robot as a Los Angeles artist who paints dreamlike scenes around homeless people.

💡 Street Fact: It started with a thought bubble. NBC Los Angeles reported that his girlfriend inspired him one night to paint a thought bubble full of money over a homeless person, and that he later sold T-shirts to raise money for tents and shelter.

More: Skid Robot: The LA Graffiti Artist Turning Homelessness into a Canvas for Change

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