When publicly going after a particular graffiti artist, you should be sure you will catch them. If you don’t, all your work will turn them into a much bigger phenomenon than before you tried to make an example of them. Gavin Newsom and Officer Putz, I’m looking in your direction. In the end it’s better to work with vandals, rather then against them.

All those in costume are welcome to join hundreds of puppets, 53 bands of different types of music, dancers and artists, and thousands of other New Yorkers in costumes of their own creation in the nation’s most wildly creative public participatory event in the greatest city in the world !

Line up at 6:30 and 8:30pm for those in costume only.
Enter the line-up on 6th Ave. from the East and South between Canal and Spring

Tuesday, October 31, 2006 7 - 10 p.m.
Watch on 6th Avenue from Spring Street to 21st Street from 7 - 10 p.m.
http://www.halloween-nyc.com/

“Just For Kicks” is the first documentary film featuring an overview of the sneaker phenomena through interviews of world-renown collectors, Hip-Hop pioneers, industry players, rap stars, journalists, brand marketers and other sneaker addicts. In the film, shot in New York, Paris, London, Portland and Los Angeles, insider personalities such as Bobbito Garcia, Rock Steady Crew’s Doze Green, Grandmaster Caz & JDL (Cold Crush Brothers), Rev. Run, DMC & Russell Simmons, Scoop Jackson, Futura 2000, Fab 5 Freddy, Bonz Malone, Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon, Damon Dash and more share their passion and their perspectives on how and why sneakers have evolved into one of the key elements of style of the MTV generation.

Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave @ East 2nd Street, New York City
October 30th @ 8 PM

Welcome reception with music provided by QOOL DJ MARV
Q&A with Just For Kicks’ Director Thierry Daher
Cocktail reception following the screening

Early arrival is suggested as space is limited
RSVP required

Black Label’s Bike Kill 4
October 28, 2006
Sandford and Willoughby Street, Brooklyn

Edit: Photo report posted October 29, 2006.

A 400 million year old rock emerges from Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene one week before Halloween. What can a 10 ton, 7 foot tall piece of rock dress up as for some trick or treat action?

Continue reading: Costuming a 10 Ton Rock For Halloween

For some the end of October means Halloween, for others it means the madness and sensory overload of Black Label’s 4th annual Bike Kill, a bicycle block party in Bed-Stuy. Whether riding a ridiculous bike or clothes lining someone off one, it was in your best interest to keep moving as a giant foam, sore-covered penis was on hand to blast clay slurry in the face of the unmindful.

Few rolled away clean or unscathed after the six pack race, foot down, excite bike course, bike jousting, general mayhem between competitions and air attack of giant foam skulls soaked in murky puddles, dead bicycles, and whatever else was on hand. If you can imagine it, it probably happened. Here’s to lazy Sundays.

More photos of Bike Kill 2006 by Tod Seelie, Mess NYC’s photo report (via BikeBlog), and on Flickr by f.trainer, violentgrind, and jyen1.

Got some more?

Continue reading: Black Label Bike Kill 2006

Tragedy struck early Saturday morning as the streetwear and skate shops of Lafayette Street slept. The scaffolding on the west side of Lafayette Street between Prince and Houston Street was apparently no match for winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour. As the wreckage of the collapsed scaffolding stands between the public and their beloved boutiques, let’s hold hands and pray for a speedy recovery. Thank goodness no sneakerheads were camped outside on this night of catastrophic wind.

Supreme, Wesc, Stackhouse, Dunderdon Workshop, G Star, Brooklyn Industries and Triple 5 Soul: Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time.

Photos from Verbose Coma and Curbed.

Yesterday, The Queens Gazette wrote up the reopening of a hardware store destroyed by a fire on Father’s Day 2001. Three fire fighters were killed and others seriously injured by the fire when gasoline was ignited by a basement pilot light and blew out the store’s facade. It’s undoubtedly a tragic story, but some of the reporting is questionable at best.

It began when two boys, then 13 and 15 years old, sneaked into the store’s back yard on the afternoon of June 17, 2001. After they had tired of other amusements, they decided to try “burning” graffiti-writing whatever they chose to scrawl in gasoline on a given surface and then setting the “writing” on fire so the image burned into the surface. In the melee, a can of gasoline tipped over and spilled. The gasoline flowed through the crack at the bottom of a door giving access to the store basement. The gasoline had partly evaporated and the vapors ignited in the flame of the pilot light of a gas hot water heater.

Does “burning graffiti” into “a given surface” sound too vague and heavy handed. It should. It’s entirely made up. While there is consensus that the boys were looking for spray paint to do graffiti, the only mention of the boys doing anything with gasoline besides accidentally knocking it over, is unsurprisingly, a 2005 editorial in the Queens Gazette.

The fire started when two teenage boys who were burning graffiti into the store’s rear wall accidentally tipped over a gasoline can.

For future reference, it is very suspicious when these silly facts are not reported in the NY Times, NY Post, NY Daily News, or official investigation report for that matter. We’re not accusing the Queens Gazette of fabricating evidence. Wait, yes, we are. Please don’t try to play us like that.

When we saw Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror unveiling in September, we figured we’d be back to check it out in its unobstructed glory. In truth, one slightly obscured look was enough.

In comparison to his sculpture, The Bean (or Cloud Gate for purists), in Chicago’s Millenium Park, Sky Mirror is a disappointment. While one can touch, walk through, and interact indefinitely with the Bean, Sky Mirror allows for nothing after studying its two angles and admiring 30 Rockefeller Plaza upside down. Forget playing with the reflected perspectives of the sculpture. Only through a telephoto lens can one get close enough to Sky Mirror to recognize their reflection. It’s telling that the Bean’s cloudiness is the result of greasy finger tips, while the Sky Mirror’s murkiness is only the result of construction flaws.

The Sky Mirror comes down tomorrow, October 27th. Unlike the Gates of 2006, it will not live on as cheap promotional swag.

Five out of eight wheels still beats a six year old kid holding Mom’s hand and rocking heelys in the grocery store.