Oliva Plans New Mural for Wall

Oliva has been comfortably situated at 161 East Houston for more than a decade, offering a variety of Spanish tapas, delicious sangria, and live music.  And even the occasional late-night summertime sidewalk salsa dance. Around the corner on Allen is their artistic nod to the neighborhood – a colorful mural.

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[July 2008]

It’s a veritable collage of downtown culture, channeling the vibes of immigrant life through dancing and tenement living.  However, due to its highly-visible position just above the entrance to the F train, the facade is prone to random acts of graffiti.  In fact, within the last year or so, the mural boasted quite the collection of felt-tip tags.  Nothing to really obscure the image or message itself, but it seemed to worsen over time.

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[January 2011]

Fairly recently, though, more ambitious vandals arrived and bombed the entire bottom half of the wall.  We reached out to management, and received the following comment: “It was okay with a few tags here or there but now it’s kind of out of control!” Well, it’s certainly become a living, breathing piece of street art.

But there’s more! Oliva is currently working with a fresh team of artists to design a new concept for the space.  Painting should commence in the coming months, so stay tuned.