Juan Rodriguez’s LinkNYC brick-throwing rampage last month had precedent, or else Rodriguez had done some warming up. I had seen at least three instances of advertising screens smashed all to hell, though I know I saw more without photographing them. I’m not really a fan of documenting property damage and vandalism, but I got a few captures of damage done to LinkNYC’s ad panels as well as the tablet screens in 2018 and 2019. The damage done to this machine on 8th Avenue in Manhattan in July of last year bears an undeniable resemblance to some of what Rodriguez did last month.

This Times Square kiosk, now permanently removed, got some abuse in August of last year. From a distance I remember thinking the taped-up patterns were the work of an artist. Nothing doing. It’s just taped up so no one will touch it.

But one of the most interesting damaged screens was this one, on Third Avenue, in February of this year. At first I thought the image shown was intentionally distorted to create some kind of craqueler effect, as if to imbue the image with a kind of mock religiosity. But the image changed and the craquelerity remained, revealing that the screen endured some kind of damage. But with what instrument? I could not determine the point of impact. I can’t tell exactly what happened here but will assume some random flying object struck the screen.

Then there are all the smashed tablet screens I’ve seen. Here is a short photo gallery of 5 of them.