Graffiti Ride
Although the crackdown has had effects, New York City remains a vast
and vibrant open canvas for street art and graf. Coming up as a graf
writer on the streets of California we were in awe of the artists
here -- artists like Zypher, Kaws, Revs, and Samo. Some of the old
pieces can still be seen along with breathtaking new work from bold
young artists. The work spans this entire town, so the best way to
see it is on two wheels.
Bike tour starts at the Wall of Fame
106 Street and Park in the school yard, Manhattan
Noon; $free
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Jet + Rubble show
Here's the flyer I got and here's what Kelly Burns said about it:
'would you like to see what are undoubtedly the sickest stencils in NY?... come to this opening and have a look. the mind will boggle, and that's bank.
hope you're all doing well, and hope to see you there.'
'would you like to see what are undoubtedly the sickest stencils in NY?... come to this opening and have a look. the mind will boggle, and that's bank.
hope you're all doing well, and hope to see you there.'
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Crisis for graf artist
So our beloved Algernon is in serious deep shit with the law in Florida. He messaged me last night that they are trying to stick him with $250,000 worth of damages. I will break the story in a day or two when I have more information and can put together something concrete. For now, you can pm him on Stencilrevolution.com and let him know you want to support him.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Sunday, August 21, 2005
So finally I sat down and wrote you a little story about the outside institute, hand drawn maps, back alleys of London, metal music, mullets, Eddi Yip from China unexpectedly opening doors in England, guest lists and opening nights, and it erased itself. It wasnt meant to be I guess. So here are the shots of D*face's outside institute in London. Fuck computers...
The Outside Institute
When we returned 5 hours later, after getting past the guest list, this is what we found:
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Berlin - Czarnobyl having an opening
Stencil king Czarnobyl is having another opening. Be sure to check it out if you're in Berlin.
Monday, August 15, 2005
The dragon bar
Sorry everything's been so quiet in the last couple days. I'm finally able to upload photos again, and I've got some stuff to share from London.
These are the ladies room at the Dragon Bar in London. It's been in the news a lot lately. Apparently they want to tear it down and build a stabucks and some luxury condos? Eww. You can find pieces by everyone from Skewville to Faile to Eine to Bast. Everyone has gotten up in this graffers watering hole.
These are the ladies room at the Dragon Bar in London. It's been in the news a lot lately. Apparently they want to tear it down and build a stabucks and some luxury condos? Eww. You can find pieces by everyone from Skewville to Faile to Eine to Bast. Everyone has gotten up in this graffers watering hole.
Klutch's Vinyl Killers art call
The man is back with the third annual Vinyl Killers show in Portland. This show is always sick with an incredible array of contributed art. Check out www.vinylkillers.com for shots of the last one. Here's what he wrote:
Here it is finally. Long overdue and the form/info. sheet is long winded but please take the time to read it all. There are a few details that must be paid attention to and doing do will make sure things go smoothly for your entry.
To bring everyone up to date there will be two shows:
On Thursday, October 27th will be an invitational vinyl show at The Goodfoot consisting of the crew that did stuff for the Hotel Des Arts show and a few hand picked favorites.
Then on the following Thursday, November 3rd at Zeitgeist will be the Open Call Vinyl Killers show that we all know and love. Everyone is welcome to join in for this one but the tight quarters of Zeitgeist will only allow for 2 pieces from each artists.
The main points are:
$5 entry fee
2 records per artist
No multi record pieces
(unless you have one that you think is super dope then you can send a pic and try to change my mind)
Deadline October 14th, 2005
If you have questions that aren't covered in the attached document then ask them here so I can answer them for everyone. Otherwise thats pretty much it.
No big promises of making this the dopest event ever or blowing up Vinyl Killers, I am just trying to focus on putting on a fun couple of shows. I will keep working hard behind the scenes to get press/exposure for the show and who knows what else I will come up with by October.
Heres the form:
https://home.comcast.net/~russell.short/VK3_Open_Call_submittal.doc
Here it is finally. Long overdue and the form/info. sheet is long winded but please take the time to read it all. There are a few details that must be paid attention to and doing do will make sure things go smoothly for your entry.
To bring everyone up to date there will be two shows:
On Thursday, October 27th will be an invitational vinyl show at The Goodfoot consisting of the crew that did stuff for the Hotel Des Arts show and a few hand picked favorites.
Then on the following Thursday, November 3rd at Zeitgeist will be the Open Call Vinyl Killers show that we all know and love. Everyone is welcome to join in for this one but the tight quarters of Zeitgeist will only allow for 2 pieces from each artists.
The main points are:
$5 entry fee
2 records per artist
No multi record pieces
(unless you have one that you think is super dope then you can send a pic and try to change my mind)
Deadline October 14th, 2005
If you have questions that aren't covered in the attached document then ask them here so I can answer them for everyone. Otherwise thats pretty much it.
No big promises of making this the dopest event ever or blowing up Vinyl Killers, I am just trying to focus on putting on a fun couple of shows. I will keep working hard behind the scenes to get press/exposure for the show and who knows what else I will come up with by October.
Heres the form:
https://home.comcast.net/~russell.short/VK3_Open_Call_submittal.doc
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Whats happening in NYC
An article that ran in the New York Times. You can find the full thing here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/nyregion/05graffiti.html?8hpib
Cat-and-Mouse Game, With Spray Paint
By SHADI RAHIMI
Published: August 5, 2005
Ray looks like a police officer. But he's a graffiti writer, with a trim goatee and graying at the temples, who wears a stolen orange New York City Transit vest when sneaking into subway tunnels. He has a stolen set of keys that he says unlock subway cars, and he boasts that he has left his graffiti tag name, PRIZ, on subway cars at least 2,000 times in the past 20 years.
At 40, he says he has no plans to quit.
But if Lt. Steve Mona and the 75 other police officers who make up New York City's new antigraffiti unit have their way, Ray and other self-described "graffiti writers" will have no choice but to stop.
If Ray resembles a police officer, Lieutenant Mona, 45, looks like a biker. A hulking man with arms covered in colorful tattoos, he commands the 10-month-old unit, the Citywide Vandals Task Force, whose sole duty is to hunt down and arrest the thousands of people like Ray who illegally scribble, scratch, spray-paint or, using acid, burn writing onto public and private property.
Unlike Ray, who finds beauty in his work, Lieutenant Mona, an 18-year veteran of the transit police whose best friend as a teenager was a graffiti writer, has an uncompromising view: "I'm not an art critic, I'm a cop. I know what a crime is."
The debate over how to best eradicate graffiti has gone on for more than three decades. In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a sweeping plan to combat graffiti by merging the antivandalism unit of the Police Department with that of the transit police. Graffiti, the mayor said in his State of the City address, is "an invitation to criminal behavior."
The new squad is equipped with infrared and digital cameras, a database with thousands of tags and profiles of those arrested, and a book that contains the 100 or so "worst of the worst" repeat offenders. The police, Lieutenant Mona said, are intensifying their efforts.
But so is Ray. And so are others like him who are adapting to the crackdown. A dozen graffiti writers, who spoke on the condition that their full names not appear because what they do is a crime, said that tagging has become more about strategy than ever before.
They map out targets and plot escape routes. Many go out exclusively at night, favoring rooftops and boarded-up buildings that aren't likely to be painted over quickly, if at all. They trade tips online, and snap photographs of, or videotape, their work, rather than returning to admire it.
But they also admit to a new sense of paranoia. Because each side in the graffiti war keeps tabs on the other, writers are painfully aware that plainclothes officers are patrolling streets and subways, taking pictures of the hardest-hit sites, surfing graffiti Web sites, and dropping in on gatherings of writers and fans.
"When the 'goon squad' first started cracking down, a lot of people went out there with the attitude, 'We're going to get over tonight,' " Ray said. "So of course, they got caught."
Graffiti arrests are up 88.9 percent citywide since January, compared with the same period last year, according to police statistics, an increase that Lieutenant Mona attributes to his unit.
Despite the increased risk of arrest, for many graffiti writers the Citywide Vandals Task Force is not a deterrent so much as a "call to arms," said Eric Felisbret, 42, the editor of the graffiti Web site @149th Street. "It's a challenge," he said. "Most of these guys wouldn't be caught dead painting in a legal context. You get more charged up, and more prestige, this way."
For a younger graffiti writer like Harley, an East Village resident whose tag name is IMUNE, the new unit means nothing more than a shift in approach - better planning and riskier escapes that include jumping across rooftops while being chased by the police, which he brags about doing eight times.
Harley, 19, is a baby-faced skateboarder with sand-colored hair who began tagging six years ago. He said he had been arrested six times in three years - including twice this year. The longest he has spent in jail is 43 hours, he said, and he has been fined $200 twice. But he and his friends keep tagging illegally.
"A lot of my friends don't really care about the squad," said Harley. "But things definitely haven't been like they used to be."
Since his last arrest, Harley has begun painting legal murals more often, on the sides of trucks. Other graffiti writers are asking business owners for permission to paint their gates or building walls.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in South Brooklyn, Ray and his writing partner, a soft-spoken 42-year-old known as Stan1, are legally spray-painting a mural on the side of a brick building owned by a city marshal when a burly officer from the antigraffiti unit stops and asks to see proof that they have received permission to paint there. He inspects a letter from the marshal, and drives off.
Poised on a metal ladder, a can of orange Krylon spray paint in hand, Ray shakes his head. "People are used to seeing graffiti as an eyesore," he said. "But a lot of the people doing murals today are artists."
Ray, in fact, is a city employee, with a degree in fine arts. For him, graffiti is an "itch" that, he says, he will abandon only "when the passion is gone." He is mocked by taggers half his age; a few call him a "dinosaur." And as graffiti moves more into the mainstream, more of his peers are displaying their work in galleries or in advertising. Some even discourage illegal tagging.
Lee Quinones, 45, for instance, is now a legal graffiti muralist. Still idolized by fans for painting 10 cars one night in 1977 with his graffiti crew, the Fabulous 5ive, Mr. Quinones said that despite taunts of "sellout" from writers who shun the commercial market, he encourages teenagers to seize any opportunity to "go legitimate."
"It's time to move on, to move forward," he said.
Lieutenant Mona has never liked graffiti, even though one of his best friends tagged. "I was always kind of disturbed by it," he said. "It did make you feel unsafe. The theory was the best you could hope for with a graffiti-covered subway car was that people would feel like nobody was in control. At worst, they felt that the criminals were."
A mock street sign that reads "Graffiti Free Blvd." hangs in his office, inside the Citywide Vandals Task Force headquarters, a brick building in a Brooklyn trainyard, where the silence is interrupted often by the roar of the F train, which runs through the nearby Avenue X subway station. Plainclothes officers from the unit go out on patrol on foot, on bikes and in cars, and document subway tunnels and neighborhoods.
The unit is among the most expansive antigraffiti efforts in the country, says Lieutenant Mona. Police lieutenants from each of the city's precincts, housing projects and transit districts are now assigned to report their monthly progress in combating graffiti.
Lieutenant Mona's goal is for the streets of the city to be scrubbed nearly as clean as its subway trains - and, he hopes, to stay that way. "Success would be just that people can say, 'I remember when,' about the streets, like they do now with the subways," he said.
Pulling graffiti-soaked trains from service until they are cleaned is a practice that began in 1989, under Mayor Edward I. Koch. Cleaning the trains was made even easier with the introduction of stainless steel models. Frustrated by the temporary nature of their canvas, more graffiti writers moved aboveground - where the antigraffiti squad now awaits.
"The risk is greater; it's more sketchy now," said Stan1, who paints illegally on trains and in the streets. "But to me, it's about the challenge. I'm competitive, so I'm going to keep doing what I do. And, I guess, they will too."
Cat-and-Mouse Game, With Spray Paint
By SHADI RAHIMI
Published: August 5, 2005
Ray looks like a police officer. But he's a graffiti writer, with a trim goatee and graying at the temples, who wears a stolen orange New York City Transit vest when sneaking into subway tunnels. He has a stolen set of keys that he says unlock subway cars, and he boasts that he has left his graffiti tag name, PRIZ, on subway cars at least 2,000 times in the past 20 years.
At 40, he says he has no plans to quit.
But if Lt. Steve Mona and the 75 other police officers who make up New York City's new antigraffiti unit have their way, Ray and other self-described "graffiti writers" will have no choice but to stop.
If Ray resembles a police officer, Lieutenant Mona, 45, looks like a biker. A hulking man with arms covered in colorful tattoos, he commands the 10-month-old unit, the Citywide Vandals Task Force, whose sole duty is to hunt down and arrest the thousands of people like Ray who illegally scribble, scratch, spray-paint or, using acid, burn writing onto public and private property.
Unlike Ray, who finds beauty in his work, Lieutenant Mona, an 18-year veteran of the transit police whose best friend as a teenager was a graffiti writer, has an uncompromising view: "I'm not an art critic, I'm a cop. I know what a crime is."
The debate over how to best eradicate graffiti has gone on for more than three decades. In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a sweeping plan to combat graffiti by merging the antivandalism unit of the Police Department with that of the transit police. Graffiti, the mayor said in his State of the City address, is "an invitation to criminal behavior."
The new squad is equipped with infrared and digital cameras, a database with thousands of tags and profiles of those arrested, and a book that contains the 100 or so "worst of the worst" repeat offenders. The police, Lieutenant Mona said, are intensifying their efforts.
But so is Ray. And so are others like him who are adapting to the crackdown. A dozen graffiti writers, who spoke on the condition that their full names not appear because what they do is a crime, said that tagging has become more about strategy than ever before.
They map out targets and plot escape routes. Many go out exclusively at night, favoring rooftops and boarded-up buildings that aren't likely to be painted over quickly, if at all. They trade tips online, and snap photographs of, or videotape, their work, rather than returning to admire it.
But they also admit to a new sense of paranoia. Because each side in the graffiti war keeps tabs on the other, writers are painfully aware that plainclothes officers are patrolling streets and subways, taking pictures of the hardest-hit sites, surfing graffiti Web sites, and dropping in on gatherings of writers and fans.
"When the 'goon squad' first started cracking down, a lot of people went out there with the attitude, 'We're going to get over tonight,' " Ray said. "So of course, they got caught."
Graffiti arrests are up 88.9 percent citywide since January, compared with the same period last year, according to police statistics, an increase that Lieutenant Mona attributes to his unit.
Despite the increased risk of arrest, for many graffiti writers the Citywide Vandals Task Force is not a deterrent so much as a "call to arms," said Eric Felisbret, 42, the editor of the graffiti Web site @149th Street. "It's a challenge," he said. "Most of these guys wouldn't be caught dead painting in a legal context. You get more charged up, and more prestige, this way."
For a younger graffiti writer like Harley, an East Village resident whose tag name is IMUNE, the new unit means nothing more than a shift in approach - better planning and riskier escapes that include jumping across rooftops while being chased by the police, which he brags about doing eight times.
Harley, 19, is a baby-faced skateboarder with sand-colored hair who began tagging six years ago. He said he had been arrested six times in three years - including twice this year. The longest he has spent in jail is 43 hours, he said, and he has been fined $200 twice. But he and his friends keep tagging illegally.
"A lot of my friends don't really care about the squad," said Harley. "But things definitely haven't been like they used to be."
Since his last arrest, Harley has begun painting legal murals more often, on the sides of trucks. Other graffiti writers are asking business owners for permission to paint their gates or building walls.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in South Brooklyn, Ray and his writing partner, a soft-spoken 42-year-old known as Stan1, are legally spray-painting a mural on the side of a brick building owned by a city marshal when a burly officer from the antigraffiti unit stops and asks to see proof that they have received permission to paint there. He inspects a letter from the marshal, and drives off.
Poised on a metal ladder, a can of orange Krylon spray paint in hand, Ray shakes his head. "People are used to seeing graffiti as an eyesore," he said. "But a lot of the people doing murals today are artists."
Ray, in fact, is a city employee, with a degree in fine arts. For him, graffiti is an "itch" that, he says, he will abandon only "when the passion is gone." He is mocked by taggers half his age; a few call him a "dinosaur." And as graffiti moves more into the mainstream, more of his peers are displaying their work in galleries or in advertising. Some even discourage illegal tagging.
Lee Quinones, 45, for instance, is now a legal graffiti muralist. Still idolized by fans for painting 10 cars one night in 1977 with his graffiti crew, the Fabulous 5ive, Mr. Quinones said that despite taunts of "sellout" from writers who shun the commercial market, he encourages teenagers to seize any opportunity to "go legitimate."
"It's time to move on, to move forward," he said.
Lieutenant Mona has never liked graffiti, even though one of his best friends tagged. "I was always kind of disturbed by it," he said. "It did make you feel unsafe. The theory was the best you could hope for with a graffiti-covered subway car was that people would feel like nobody was in control. At worst, they felt that the criminals were."
A mock street sign that reads "Graffiti Free Blvd." hangs in his office, inside the Citywide Vandals Task Force headquarters, a brick building in a Brooklyn trainyard, where the silence is interrupted often by the roar of the F train, which runs through the nearby Avenue X subway station. Plainclothes officers from the unit go out on patrol on foot, on bikes and in cars, and document subway tunnels and neighborhoods.
The unit is among the most expansive antigraffiti efforts in the country, says Lieutenant Mona. Police lieutenants from each of the city's precincts, housing projects and transit districts are now assigned to report their monthly progress in combating graffiti.
Lieutenant Mona's goal is for the streets of the city to be scrubbed nearly as clean as its subway trains - and, he hopes, to stay that way. "Success would be just that people can say, 'I remember when,' about the streets, like they do now with the subways," he said.
Pulling graffiti-soaked trains from service until they are cleaned is a practice that began in 1989, under Mayor Edward I. Koch. Cleaning the trains was made even easier with the introduction of stainless steel models. Frustrated by the temporary nature of their canvas, more graffiti writers moved aboveground - where the antigraffiti squad now awaits.
"The risk is greater; it's more sketchy now," said Stan1, who paints illegally on trains and in the streets. "But to me, it's about the challenge. I'm competitive, so I'm going to keep doing what I do. And, I guess, they will too."
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
The ELC (Endless Love Crew) (Elevated Level Crew) (Electric Lemon Crackers)
The ELC tears it a new one....again!
Here you can see Tony Bones, Creeper, Royce Bannon, Ad from Skewville, Jazz, and a few others, and the final product. If you're in NYC and want to get down at one of these bi weekly jams hit us up at overspraymag@yahoo.com. All are welcome. In the core crew are Infinity, Royce Bannon, Abe Lincoln Jr., me, Anera and kid splat.
Here you can see Tony Bones, Creeper, Royce Bannon, Ad from Skewville, Jazz, and a few others, and the final product. If you're in NYC and want to get down at one of these bi weekly jams hit us up at overspraymag@yahoo.com. All are welcome. In the core crew are Infinity, Royce Bannon, Abe Lincoln Jr., me, Anera and kid splat.
bathroom graffiti
I just found a dope website on bathroom graffiti. Take a look. http://www.latrinalia.org/
Not only is the content cool, the shots are dope and the guy's a sik writer. Take a look at his 'rant'.
Not only is the content cool, the shots are dope and the guy's a sik writer. Take a look at his 'rant'.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Sunday, August 07, 2005
home James
Finally, back in NYC. It's been 4 absolutely mad days in London with Beejoir from AMP in Bangkok, D*face, Mjar from invisiblemadevisible.com (East London street art expert), Jake, Eddi from Adfunture, eight bit turned up in the end, and many others. I still havent got a new cable so still no shots from there, but we've got plenty.
In the meantime, peep these shots from Mephisto's opening in NZ. Fresh!
...Having a few problems uploading shots. Should be up in just a bit.
In the meantime, peep these shots from Mephisto's opening in NZ. Fresh!
...Having a few problems uploading shots. Should be up in just a bit.
Friday, August 05, 2005
The Berlin chronicles - part 3
Never one to leave you hanging, here are a few more shots from Berlin.
drizzle
I'm hanging out a bathroom window in London, trying to get a wifi signal. So far so good.
I've lost the cable for my camera so no shots for now. Hopefully I'll have some for oyu tonight or tomorrow.
Otherwise, checked out the Outside Institute's Adfunture opening last night, saw D*Face's new D Dog toy (fresh. al the urban vinyl heads will flip), caught up with the man himself, and made a date to hang out with Eddi Yip, the man behind AdFunture. I'll get pics up of the opening as soon as I can.
--io
I've lost the cable for my camera so no shots for now. Hopefully I'll have some for oyu tonight or tomorrow.
Otherwise, checked out the Outside Institute's Adfunture opening last night, saw D*Face's new D Dog toy (fresh. al the urban vinyl heads will flip), caught up with the man himself, and made a date to hang out with Eddi Yip, the man behind AdFunture. I'll get pics up of the opening as soon as I can.
--io
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
tower canvas
This is a painting by Berlin artist TOWER (aka, the muthafuckin KING of Friedrichshain).
We're travelling to London in 20 minutes, so I hope this wont be the last post of the day, but it might be.
We're travelling to London in 20 minutes, so I hope this wont be the last post of the day, but it might be.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Stencilled clothing
These are a couple shots recovered from the fitting for the Overspray fashion shoot. Find the real shoot in Issue 4, to launch late September.
Skirt by Atten Ink.
Hoodie by Taz. Shirt by lord.boncks.
Shirt by AMP.
Shirt by Morningjoe.
Skirt by Atten Ink.
Hoodie by Taz. Shirt by lord.boncks.
Shirt by AMP.
Shirt by Morningjoe.
The outside institute
D*Face's Outside Institute is rocking the house in London. Peep their opening on Thursday.
Trigger sticker exchange
Today Trigger Magazine starts a sticker exchange program to promote artists by helping them get their work out on the streets.
To be part of it send us your stickers along with a self addressed stamped envelope to:
Trigger Magazine
447 East 14 th Street, Suite 3C
NYC, 10009
In addition to the sticker exchange we will be keeping track of all the stickers we receive on our web site so include any info you want posted with your sticker, (email, URL, etc.).
Remember, the more you send, the more you receive!
Liberation Iannillo
Publisher
Trigger Magazine
Visit us at www.triggermagazine.com
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