A mosaic survived above a Greenpoint pizzeria for more than ten years. Two men with a ladder needed less than a minute to start tearing it apart.
The mosaic that watched the block
The piece sits above Nonna's Pizzeria on Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Locals call it the Pizza Invader. It is the work of the French street artist known as Invader, who has spent more than two decades gluing pixelated tile mosaics, modeled on 1970s and 1980s video game characters, onto walls in cities around the world. He tracks every piece on a public map and rates surviving ones by how intact they are. The Nassau Avenue mosaic had held its ground for over a decade, according to Greenpointers.
The theft, tile by tile
Neighbors caught the whole thing on camera early Sunday morning, March 1, 2026. One man held a ladder steady on the sidewalk. The other climbed up and carved into the mosaic with a tool, prying tiles loose one at a time. They ripped off nearly 20 tiles before running down the block, per Greenpointers. Local outlet News 12 aired the footage, and News 12 Brooklyn reported the mosaic sits directly beneath a child's bedroom window, which rattled residents more than the property damage did.
Not the first time
This wasn't an isolated incident. Invader's mosaics have been getting pried off walls across New York since at least 2024, usually by the same method: a ladder, a tool, and a quick exit. GraffitiStreet has documented the pattern, and Invader himself has posted about it, noting that people in New York keep trying to rip his work off walls to resell it. The math doesn't work in their favor. A Pizza Invader torn from Nassau Avenue isn't a signed, authenticated artwork anymore. It's a handful of broken ceramic tiles, indistinguishable from stock you could buy at any hardware store.
What's left on the wall
The gap in the mosaic is still there. Hoodline described it as a small but visible scar on a block that takes pride in its public art. No arrest has been reported. Neighbors are hoping the security footage eventually puts a name to the two men, and that whoever tries this on the next mosaic ends up in handcuffs instead of down the block and gone. Until then, the Pizza Invader keeps its wound in plain sight, a reminder that street art left in public space stays vulnerable to the public that claims to love it.
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