Graffiti artist leaves punny message on road comparing shoddy pothole cover up to a porn site

Roads littered with potholes are a danger to public safety. Millions of dollars are poured into covering up these holes every year but the roads are one more torrential rainfall away from crumbling. The pothole problem is universal and frustrating for people all over the world. But the way they approach the problem varies from country to country and person to person.

In one small UK village, in West Yorkshire, a frustrated taxpayer decided to take a cheeky approach to vent their disappointment. While a cluster of potholes seemed to be filled up with fresh tarmac, an anonymous graffiti artist spray-painted a crude message for their municipality.

The message that left has left the residents of Steeton scandalized reads: "Have seen holes filled in better on Pornhub." The unknown person has conveyed their honest feedback about the less than perfect pothole cover-up by making a rather suggestive comparison to the adult videos on the pornographic site. While some people thought the sign was hilarious, there were others who thought it most unsuitable, considering its location. The road on which the words were spray-painted has a nursery on it which some residents thought made the whole gag inappropriate. It is also right next to the traffic lights.

The artist was dubbed W*nksy, a play on the name of world-renown street artist Banksy, on account of the political nature of the graffiti. There were others who preferred to call them a "village idiot." Speaking to Examiner Live, Steeton resident Ross Turner said, "Looks like the village idiot has been busy. Right outside the children’s nursery and on the main school walk in. Hope whoever it is, is proud of what they have done. Frankly, pathetic." The Bridge House Nursery and Pre-School is situated next to the spot where the words were painted. Children between the age of three and five go to the nursery.

Another resident believed that it was thanks to these toddlers that the potholes were fixed in the first place. "Credit to the two five-year-olds who filled the potholes in outside the nursery," he said. The fill-up job looks shoddy but the Bradford Council spokesperson had an explanation. "The repairs are only a temporary fix which is standard practice with local authorities across the UK. We will permanently repair the road within five months as part of our comprehensive maintenance program for the district," they said. The "offensive" graffiti was also removed by their highway team. But pictures of the graffiti are already making rounds on the internet.

The spokesperson added,  "For obvious reasons, interfering with road markings is a serious offense and we have reported it to the police." While these potholes may have been promptly attended to because of the little kids who would frequent the road, other places with dangerous potholes are not as lucky. If it's the shock value that attracts the attention of authorities, Good Samaritans who use dubious methods to get the job done are modern-day heroes. One road safety campaigner in New Zealand used an even more risqué form of street art to fix the pothole problem in Auckland.

Geoff Upson spray paints neon green phalluses on pothole-ridden roads and has managed to get over 100 potholes covered since 2018 when he first started. He told VICE that he turned to graffiting the streets because more than 20 complaints he had filed about a "huge and dangerous pothole" had been ignored. Before Upson was the original W*nksy, another road graffiti artist from Manchester, UK, also drew penises around potholes to get them covered faster. "I wanted to attract attention to the pothole and make it memorable," the anonymous artist stated in 2015, according to Refinery 29.