The Moustache Man is anonymous no more. The marker-wielding subway poster defacer has been arrested. Just days after giving an interview in which he made it sound like he took his silly doodles very seriously, Joseph Waldo, 26, of Manhattan, was taken into custody by the NYPD last night.
You probably recognize Waldo's work, as it seems to appear on a poster in nearly every subway stop in the city. Basically he writes the word "Moustache" where a person's moustache would be, complete with curlicues at the end of the M and E.
Police say that Waldo's recent online bragging helped them catch him after "a two-month long investigation." He has been charged with felony criminal mischief and other counts.
And when we say Waldo seems to take his work quite seriously, we weren't joking. For the record, this is how the Moustache bandit explains his oeuvre:
At it’s simplest level, it’s a quick joke meant to give commuters something to smile about while they’re waiting for the subway, coming off from a long day at work, or getting stabbed on the D train. And that’s certainly how it started. But for me it’s evolved into part of this broader movement of subverting advertisements. Especially in New York, where we’re bombarded with ads everywhere we go, it feels more and more like we’re part of a one-sided conversation. We’re getting these ridiculous images and dumb catchphrases shoved down our throats (“Good Afternoont!”), why shouldn’t we be able to talk back? So many ads are so laughably stupid that a cartoonish moustache just seems to fit. On another level, it’s a return to hand-written form in a technology driven age where we type so much that some of us have actually forgotten how to write cursive.
Also it’s about war or something.
