People enjoying street food at the Brick Lane market can nosh next to these colorful community mosaics, which line both sides of the street. Some graffiti towards the center of the mosaic has been mostly cleaned up.

For a fun outing in London, head over to Brick Lane on a market day.  In addition to some great officially-sanctioned mosaics (left), you’ll find lots of cool street art and fun stuff painted on or glued to just about every bare space of wall you’ll come across.

Lots of small details – like this “window penguin” – are hidden in corners and on ledges, while other giant works of art – like the menacing primate overlooking the market below – are hard to miss.

Maybe every window needs a penguin.

Do you ever feel as though you're being watched?

One of my favorites near Brick Lane - a portrait created in gouged-out concrete on an alley wall.

The guardian of Brick Lane.

Officially, we were on the hunt for Space Invaders, and did indeed find three of them in Brick lane.  My friend Alex has written about our treasure hunt for these guys and has some more precise location info for anyone interested in tracking them down.

Graffiti covers a section of this Brick Lane mosaic for the Heba Women's Project.

Some taggers were more polite and did their thing around, rather than on top of, the mosaic.

Of course, any public art is vulnerable to defacement, and probably doubly so when located in an area renowned for a genre that usually involves vandalism, at least in the eyes of the law.  You can see the remnants of some tagging on the big community mosaic above, as well as on this Brick Lane mosaic for the Heba Women’s Project.  However, when you look at the HWP mosaic head-on, you can see how many more taggers respected the mosaic and did their thing around it, rather than on top of it.  I think that’s worth recognizing.