The Sidewalk Has a Sense of Humor (9 Photos)

The sidewalk is in on the joke

Phone boxes fall like dominoes, a wall lamp spills solid yellow light, and three concrete barriers turn into arcade ghosts. Most of these artists didn’t have to bring the main prop. It was already standing on the street. When David Mach did bring his own, he brought twelve phone boxes.

These nine works borrow bollards, bike racks, cables, fire pipes and poles, then give each one a second role. OakOak’s site describes his approach with a French verb, détourner: to divert urban elements, even flaws like the cracks in a wall, and get a smile out of people walking by.

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💡 “(fos)” — By Susana Piquer, Eleni Karpatsi and Julio Calvo in Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸

A wall lamp outside Rayén restaurant appears to throw a solid yellow beam over the door, a café table, a stool, a folding chair and the sidewalk. In daylight, the light is made of yellow tape and painted objects.

💡 Word Fact: The team chose the name because fos means light in Greek and melted in Catalan.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced facts(fos)Susana Piquer, Eleni Karpatsi and Julio Calvo · 2013 · Calle de Lope de Vega 7, MadridYellow tape, 250 m+Four days and nights1Design Playground lists a picture, pineapples, a table and a vase among the things engulfed by the yellow beam.Design Playground2The team explains that fos means light in Greek and melted in Catalan.Archilovers2013Four days and nights on Rayen’s front201313 OctDesign Playground documents it202320 SepMastering Public Space names the authorsRead the full file →

📷 Image courtesy of (fos).

More: More Views of (fos) in Madrid

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🎵 Bob Marley on a Utility Box — By Tom Bob in New York City, USA 🇺🇸

Tom Bob painted Bob Marley’s face on a utility box at Broadway and West 151st Street in Harlem and let the hanging cables become his dreadlocks. Below, a small body flashes a peace sign.

💡 Method Fact: Tom Bob works from sketches, then cuts stencils and spray-paints the image. The object does the rest: “I’m not creating the sculpture. It’s already existing,” he told New Bedford Light.

More: Tom Bob’s Clever Street Art

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🍏 The Son of Man as a Bollard — By OakOak

A round-topped bollard already looks like a man in a bowler hat. OakOak added a white collar, a red tie and a green apple, and Magritte’s The Son of Man now guards the curb.

💡 Art History Fact: René Magritte painted The Son of Man in 1964 as a self-portrait. In a 1965 radio interview, he explained the hidden face: “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” On the curb, what the apple hides is the top of a bollard.

More: OakOak’s Street Surprises

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🐸 A Frog at the Water’s Edge — By Tom Bob in Kaohsiung, Taiwan 🇹🇼

A rounded mooring bollard on the quay becomes a lime-green frog sticking out its tongue. Long painted frog toes spread across the concrete, as if it is about to hop into the harbor.

💡 Scouting Fact: Before flying to art festivals around the US, Tom Bob often scouts the host city on Google Street View, searching its neighborhoods for objects worth painting.

More: Tom Bob’s Clever Street Art

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👻 Ghosts in the Square — By OakOak

Three rounded concrete barriers already had the right shape. OakOak added orange, blue and red paint and a pair of square eyes each, and the square got its own Pac-Man ghosts.

💡 Game Fact: OakOak painted three of the four ghosts. In Toru Iwatani’s 1980 arcade game Pac-Man, the red ghost chases Pac-Man directly, the pink and blue ones try to get in front of him, and the orange one moves at random. Pink is the one missing from this square.

More: OakOak’s Street Surprises

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🪢 A Bike-Rack Skipping Rope — By Tom Bob in Dubai, United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪

At La Mer, a girl in a blue dress holds the two ends of a wavy bicycle rack as a skipping rope. Her painted hands meet the rack’s mounting plates on the floor, so the metal loop arcs over her head right where the rope should be.

💡 Festival Fact: Tom Bob was a first-time participant in Dubai Canvas, a 3D art festival organized by Brand Dubai. Its fourth edition was held at La Mer on March 1–7, 2018.

More: Tom Bob’s Clever Street Art

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☎️ “Out of Order” — By David Mach in Kingston upon Thames, England 🇬🇧

Twelve retired red telephone boxes tip into one another along Old London Road. The last box seems to be the only one still holding on. Kingston council commissioned the work from David Mach in 1988, when withdrawn K6 boxes had left many councils wondering what to do with them. Mach installed Out of Order in 1989. The title is a pun: the sign on a broken payphone, and a row that has lost its order.

💡 Phone Fact: The boxes came from British Telecom, and the sculpture cost £37,000, a figure the Kingston Informer revealed in 1990. When the boxes were cleaned up and repainted cherry red for the sculpture’s 30th birthday in 2019, Mach said that “although they were removed from the British landscape, I feel they still bind us as a nation.”

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsOut of OrderDavid Mach · 1989 · Old London Road, Kingston upon Thames12 red telephone boxesOld London Road1Mach used twelve retired telephone boxes from British Telecom, set up to look as if they were toppling like dominoes.Londonist2For the 30th anniversary in 2019, the faded boxes were cleaned and repainted cherry red.Londonist1989DecInstalled, per the 2005 photo caption200514 AugMark Percy photographs it · camera date201823 FebLoco Steve photographs it · camera date2019Cleaned and repainted for its 30th · Londonist202127 MayEthan Doyle White photographs it · camera dateMore photos2021 Bright red, two years after the 30th-anniversary repaintingPhoto: Ethan Doyle White / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)Read the full file →

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📷 Photo: Loco Steve / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). Cropped in the cover.

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❤️ Very Hot — By OakOak

Two red fire standpipes lean toward each other on a white wall. A googly eye each, bent arms and two floating hearts turn the fire connections into a couple, and the title takes care of the pun.

💡 Artist Fact: OakOak comes from Saint-Étienne in France. Since 2007, streets, walls, sidewalks and roads have been his playground, and he leaves his drawings in the places he passes through. In 2017 and 2018, the city of Brussels gave him free rein to create a street-art trail.

More: OakOak’s Street Surprises

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🌼 A Tiled Base for a Street Pole — By Ememem in Reims, France 🇫🇷

Outside Bibliothèque Carnegie, white petals spread from the foot of a metal pole like a flower around its stem, and the tiles creep into the gaps between the paving stones. Ememem, an anonymous artist based in Lyon, fills damaged sidewalks with mosaic and calls it flacking, from the French flaque, a puddle. The work is done at night, so the pieces are usually found at dawn.

💡 Material Fact: In Reims, Ememem also mended the damaged rims of manhole covers, using reclaimed materials that included ancient tesserae from the Musée des Beaux-Arts excavation site. A Reims arts association passes on the artist’s own description of the job: sidewalk poet, mender of asphalt.

More: Ememem’s Mosaic Repairs

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Same trick, different terms

Most of the props were free. Permission is another matter. Tom Bob told New Bedford Light that in the beginning, “if you’re doing it illegally, you don’t want to get caught,” so you work faster; once pieces have permission, you can take your time. His skipping rope was a festival piece, Brussels gave OakOak free rein for a whole trail, and Kingston commissioned Mach’s boxes outright. In 2025, Ememem’s work was among the stops on a new Reims trail of nine street-art works honoring Art Deco, a century after the city was rebuilt.