Year’s Best Implosions

Coming home for the holidays carries several pitfalls for the rusty suburbanite. Some surprises arise as well, which always helps alleviate the monotony that continues to creep into this strip-malled future. The perfect metaphor for this fell in my lap Saturday when I was flipping channels during breakfast.

CNN Headline News ran a piece on the “Year’s Best Implosions,” playing a reel (this isn’t the clip I saw, but the only one CNN posted) of about a dozen structures being systematically blown up to make way for newer, bigger structures. I had the sound on “MUDO” (for some reason, none of my parent’s remotes work well. The one for their main TV speaks Spanish, while the one for their cable box doesn’t speak to the TV.) and munched on granola in rice milk as humankind’s follies fell down one after another.
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Wild Style NYC to 1920s NYC

Met up with Jonathan and Devin, friends from SF, yesterday afternoon and had a step back into history. Near the 1 stop at Canal St., Jonathan and I walked right past Kevin Bacon as we were about to head into the Scrap Yard graffiti shop. This small shop carries everything from paint pens, tiny Montana cans, to water pipes and graffiti wear. Devin and his girl soon showed up, so we ate lunch on Broadway. Continuing the mood, the cafe played old 1980s hip hop songs (Devin popped and locked a bit when the urge hit him).

We walked up to 151 Wooster St., and I photographed stencils along the way. First, we walked into a gallery full of so-so art. The curator tried to lure us in, and when I asked where the “Wild Style” show was, he scoffed and said that we were in a room full of “real art.” We left to look for another entrance to the building and found it. No elevator due to the building’s ongoing construction (being converted to hyperexpensive lofts), but the exhibit of 1980s street art was only on the second floor. It was locked, and a group of people were having a meeting across the hall. Devin had no qualms about interrupting them to ask about the locked gallery. In a few minutes, an older man let us in. He was accommodating and pleasant, setting up the DVD player so we could watch art historians and folks like Fab 5 Freddy talk about the “Wild Style” wall. Harings, Scharfs, and a Basquiat hung on the walls, along with so-so pieces from graff legends like Fab 5 Freddy himself. The Wild Style wall itself is mostly a photograph of the real wall they found on the fifth floor of the building. There’s a large chunk of it that’s the actual wall, and it all looks amateurish and half-ass. We all agreed that it was a true historical piece of fun that, had hip hop not become a culture in itself, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes after the workers saw the scrawls. Jonathan complained to the curator about the gallery downstairs, and the nice guy said “they aren’t going to be there much longer.”

Devin and his girl had to go their own way, so Jonathan and I wandered around SoHo for a bit. We were both waiting to hear from upcoming meetups. I eventually worked out a meetup with Justine, the Stencil Nation book designer, so Jonathan and I wandered over to Greenwich Village to find a spot to wait. We asked an old local where a noncorporate cafe was, and he sent us to Cafe Reggio. Right around the corner from Washington Square, this spot hasn’t changed in probably 70 years. Hell, Greenwich Village hasn’t changed that much since then. Felt good to not see corporate chain stores anywhere. Jonathan got his call and had to leave, but he stayed long enough to meet Justine.

Had a great few hours with Justine. We didn’t go into much details on the changes of the first draft, but did discuss the need to replace photos due to the Stencil History X overlap. I also showed her the Chronology and mentioned to her that it needs to flow better. We also talked about a few other things related to the book, graffiti and street art, and other general things. I’ll spend next week typing out the changes for her, going over Logan’s new submissions, choosing new photos to replace the old ones, and then will send it all her way for a January push to a second draft.

Wandered around the corner and found a great veggie spot for dinner. Then tried to see Beowulf in two theaters but all shows were sold out. Guess we should all believe the 3D hype! Oh, well, I’ve been pounding out 12 hour days in NYC this week, so a 9 hour day is a needed break.

Stencil Nation in Chelsea

Yesterday was a puppets and stencils day. Spent the afternoon in Chelsea, which has a cluster of art galleries. This means that a good deal of street art is up around there. Found a Swoon piece that she submitted to be published in the book. It was right across the street from EYEBEAM, an arts and technology center where old SF cohort Steve Lambert plies his creative trade. You can’t miss the EYEBEAM space because it has cascading blue paint dripping down its facade (noticed some stencils up on their roof too). Steve’s doing good, and took me on a tour of the facility. He showed me the Lab where his work station is located, the 3D printer (it cuts shapes out of plastic), the laser cutting machine, and I met a few of his coworkers. He then took me around as we headed to the roof door. The roof door was locked, but I did manage to shoot some random stencils around the space. Most of them were made by Graffiti Research Labs. Great things going on there. Got to show Steve the book and talk to him about some promotional ideas for the book. After that, went to a street art show right around the corner from EYEBEAM. The Streets of Europe is up until December 29 at the Jonathan Levine Gallery. Took photos of the Bleck pieces, and enjoyed Blu’s great animation of illustrations he painted on the walls in the room where you watch the video. The moving pictures were in various forms of being painted over on the walls, so the video gives contrast to this buffed state via the story that you see on the screen.

Spent the late afternoon watching “Pippi” at the Swedish Cottage and then spent the evening with friend and puppeteer Kevin White. We ended up eating hot dogs in the Lower East Side at a place called Crif Dogs. There’s a phone booth in this subterranean joint that serves as an entrance to a speakeasy bar! Crif’s bathroom is also hidden behind wood paneling and is unlocked when the counterperson clicks a button.

Phone Photos 1.0

Got a new fangled smart phone last month, mostly because of the 2.0 megapixel camera that is part of the package. You can also add MicroSD memory up to 4gb and capture video as well. I know why they call them CrackBerrys now because I jump every time the Pearl downloads email (it “yells” at me with two vibrations, which I think is an incoming call most of the time). Trying to use the phone to take interesting photos. Hope you like this batch.

Saw this inside ATA on Valencia St. and couldn’t resist taking a photo. Bet Heart doesn’t mind being crossed by KUK!

Jaut has been spraying bikes around SF for a while now. I plan on showing a bike graff slide show at an upcoming event I’m producing, so have started capturing Jaut’s bike art.

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A Long Evening with Logan Hicks

After three delays, one of which was a canceled flight, I finally got into Manhattan around 2am Monday morning. Slept a good 8 hours and then started making phone calls before breakfast. One of those calls went to Logan Hicks, who now lives here, and we planned to meet up Monday evening for a few hours. Hadn’t met Logan before, so was glad to get to finally hang out with this amazing stencil artist. After wandering around the Lower East side of Manhattan most of the day, looking for stencils in the freezing weather, I hopped a train over to Brooklyn and rang Logan’s door. He was waiting for FedEx to mail a pile of packages, so we spent the first hour in his apartment. FedEx never came so we then wandered down the street to have some pizza and then went to his old studio (empty for the most part except for random studio things of Logan’s mate HAZE). His working warehouse location is heavily guarded due to the potential to rack (steal) all of his SABATOZ paint cans (Logan is the North American distributor for the brand). Other than talking about his new son, who tagged along (pun intended), Logan and I shared stencil stories, talked about the paint can business (much more competitive now), the art of being a successful artist, the trappings of the art world, and we caught up on mutual friends. Things got down to the book, so I showed him the first draft, edited with red markings by me and Jennifer before I left SF. He liked it and saw a few new artists whose work he didn’t know. Jetlag began to hit me when his girl showed up to their place. Logan had just given me a copy of “Stencil History X” from Paris. I already knew that some of the artists that I feature (Jef Aerosol, Logan, Peat W, M City) where in this French book. What I found out as I flipped through it was that some of the SAME photos where in there too! So began a mad rush to flip through my roughs and find as many of the same photos as possible. I think I found a dozen, and, to his credit, Logan only had one cross over (Peat had four!). As the jet lag got worse, I got a bit manic and messed up the page order of the print out. Logan was super nice about my going into editing mode and sat at his computer and hit me up with about two dozen new photos of his works and a few new Peat W. and M City pieces. One thing that kinda freaks me out is that Justine only used some of my photo selections for the first draft. This means that the replacements, which I didn’t have at Logan’s place, may be in the French book too! Logan offered to send me photos of the book pages (he got his copy from Chris Stain) if I needed them. Looking at his happy family, I thanked him and gently said that I’d never do that around this time of year. Calming down, his girl and I fondly recalled her days living in SF. Then it was off to trains back to Manhattan, a few of which my meddled mind missed stops on, making the trip back about 3x too long!