‘You don’t scare us COVID-19’: There’s a new mural in Wynwood — but no selfies yet

Remember the famous Hurricane Irma mural in Miami Beach?

Local street artist Beau Bradbury painted a large piece of art outside the Geneva Hotel back in September 2017, which seems like forever ago now.

The work featured the University of Miami’s mascot Sebastian the Ibis, looking fierce, saying, “You Don’t Scare Us Irma,” and the spot became selfie central for a time.

Bradbury has another message in the age of coronavirus.

On Thursday the artist spray painted a new mural on a building near Centro Wynwood on NW 23rd Street. Sebastian is again featured, looking angry, fist pumped to the sky. “You don’t scare us, COVID-19” reads the fighting words. On its hat reads “Becca,” Bradbury’s wife.

The artist isn’t a UM grad, but he chose an ibis as his star again because the bird is known as “the last one to leave during the storm and the first to return,” the New York native told The Hurricane after Irma.

The ibis is again his fitting symbol for coronavirus.

But this time, Bradbury told the Miami Herald that he wants this mural to raise awareness for another situation the world faces besides this insidious disease.

“If we responded to climate change like we have COVID we’d see an impact on environment,” he said. “Selling us on lowering our carbon footprint. It’s a grim subject but it’s really happening.”

While it’s open to the public, we are sadly probably not going to be able to get near it anytime soon as we have all been advised to stay put in our homes.

This story was originally published March 27, 2020 4:14 PM.