Street Art Cities

Den Bosch based street artist Patrick de Kaste has given a bicycle tunnel under the Diezebrug a new life with cartoons. Many residents of Den Bosch shunned the tunnel because it always smelled bad. "Even my children didn't dare to go through it. There was rubbish and it always smelled of urine"  says De Kaste. "You nearly fainted when you walked through that tunnel. Everyone went there to relieve their needs. It was like a public toilet."

Swase (pseudonym of De Kaste) painted his own designed cartoons on the walls of the tunnel.  He got permission to do so after mailing the municipality of 's-Hertogenbosch for one and a half years. "The cartoon animals tell something about the tunnel's past," he says.  "Of course, the smell doesn't disappear with a work of art like this, but it does make it less inviting to urinate against the wall."