Enormous mural of erect penis briefly pops up in New York
As the headline might suggest, this story contains images of, well, a rather enormous penis.
For a brief spell over the festive period, the Lower East Side had an enormous erection.
No, really it did. A huge, four-storey mural of a turgid penis popped up on a building on Broome St. in New York City on Christmas Eve. But, a mere matter of days after the phallus made its debut on the street, the mural was painted over at the request of the building's landlord.
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The handiwork of Swedish artist Carolina Falkholt, the phallic artwork was commissioned by local street art organisation The New Allen. The giant penis was intended as a complement to a nearby super-sized mural of a vagina on Pike Street.
"I usually paint giant vaginas, pussies and cunts," Falkholt told The Guardian. "And since I had just finished one on the side of a five-storey building, I felt like a dick was needed."
Falkholt says the space on Broome Street was a "perfect fit" for the penis painting. "To paraphrase Judith Bernstein, if a dick can go into a woman, it can go up on a wall," she added.
Per Lower East Side-based blog The Lo-Down, local residents didn't exactly take too kindly to the sudden appearance of a huge dick in the neighbourhood.
"While I happen to love and appreciate street art, your latest commissioned display is the most disgusting display of art I’ve seen," wrote LES resident Naomi Pena in an email to the street art foundation.
Franco Noriega, from the organisation who commissioned the piece, told The Independent the mural was intended to "raise a conversation about something that is taboo still in New York and the world."
"First of all to be comfortable and raise awareness about sexuality being something very normal. Also about sexual abuse because the penis is something used sometimes as a weapon," Noriega said. "Half of the world has a penis so why would it be so controversial?" he added.
Sadly, the mural proved too controversial and had to be painted over some 48 hours after its first appearance by order of the building's landlord.
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Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Topics New York City
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
