Before I knew his official name, I was calling him the Standpipe Slitherer. (John Willenbecher spotted him in front of 44 Lispenard and sent me these photos.) But he’s actually Bucky! And the work of Tom Bob, whose been making art in the city for decades. He started making his whimsical street art pieces about six years ago, in his 60s.

“I walk through neighborhoods and I look for unique objects,” he told The Grunion, the local paper in Long Beach where he has a few installations. “I’ve always had a love interest for art, but this came to me later on in life.

He’s turned pipes into anteaters, a paper towel dispenser into Darth Vader, a manhole cover into a frying pan with two eggs, a construction cone into a Campbell’s Soup can. See his work here.

“The emotion I try to create is happiness — that’s my focus,” Tom Bob said in the Grunion video below. “And the thing which I love about street art is it’s, you know, the most democratic art form to me and it’s the most worldwide expressive art form in the last 15 years. And it’s for everyone to see. It’s for the common person just walking down the street, not going to a gallery, just to put a smile on their face.”