On Hot 97 yesterday, Papoose responded to the Sean Bell shooting in Queens. (via Nah Right)

Listen: Papoose - 50 Shots

Photo from Stephen Chernin/Getty Images/NYT.

As reported yesterday, the MTA will not be hiking subway fares in 2007. Your 2 dollar metrocard still isn’t safe though. A fare hike is likely in 2008 considering the MTA’s projected deficit of $1.8 billion dollars in 2010. Among other budget items, the MTA is committing a bunch of money to clean up their look: $50 million dollars to repaint subway stations and $19.3 million to replace damaged windows. Not just windows damaged by Map’s hammer attack either, but all windows with scratchiti and etch tags. The new windows will be protected with mylar, which is more easily replaced when marked.

The Scratch-Free window program, between 2007 and 2009, will provide replacement of all scratched subway car window glass and installation of four-ply Mylar on the R44 through R68A fleets, and installation of four-ply Mylar on the R142, R142A and R143 fleets. By 2009, all subway car window glass on the fleets will be scratch-free.

In a basement lab somewhere, writers are undoubtedly developing a more caustic plastic and glass eating etch.

Etchings on the window of the R train by thefangmonster.

Saturday night, Sputnik in Clinton Hill played host to Big Art Show Brooklyn #11, a volunteer driven guerilla-style art and music showcase featuring some 15-odd unknown local artists and a handful of bands. The mission of Big Art Show is to create an artistic environment unincumbered by money and corporate sponsorship, not to mention pesky standards of common decency. This Saturday’s gallery featured the first Big Art Brawl, in which the back room of the gallery at Sputnik was magically tarped off and transformed into a live art collaboration-cum-unruly paint fight. Yves Klein would be proud.

Check Big Art Show to find out how to perform or display your own work, and when the next event is going down.

Post Art Brawl photo by Fort Cloudy.

The life of socialite and legendary muse, Edie Sedgwick, comes to the big screen when Factory Girl is released next month (assuming the film finishes reshooting some scenes). Sedgwick inspired Andy Warhol and a slew of other artists, including Bob Dylan.

Nico thought that Dylan might have been referring to Edie in the song, Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, which was included on the album. Some claimed that the phrase “your debutante” referred to Edie on the track, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again. It was also rumored that Just Like a Woman was about Edie. The non-Warhol film that Edie made after she left the Factory, Ciao Manhattan, had Just Like a Woman as part of its soundtrack. Some Dylan biographers, however, think that the song was probably about Dylan’s relationship with Joan Baez.

Unsurprisingly, Sedgwick’s influence can be found across t-shirts, tote bags, books, websites and films 35 years after she died of a drug overdose.

Yesterday, the Village Voice tagged Jackson Pollis an “It” boy in the same vein as “It” girl, Edie Sedgwick. Though Pollis has a “LiveJournal fan site, which boasts 211 members,” comparisons to Sedgwick and Warhol’s Factory entourage are hasty. Who doesn’t have a livejournal fan club these days?

So long Sky Watch! Curbed provides the photo of the NYPD carting one of their prison yard watch towers away from 129th Street in Harlem. Last week in the NY Post, residents criticized the tower’s special placement outside The Lenox and The Lenox Grand, two new luxury condo developments, though the NYPD claims they were simply responding to a rise in murders.

Feeling left out? The NYPD plans to lease 3 more Sky Watches for a neighborhood near you.

Skywatch photo from Curbed.

The demolition party for the Hewitt Building at Cooper Square is coming up, so the “I Miss the Old NY” neatly written in olde english lettering is fitting. Once the construction barriers go up, it’s hard not to mourn the imminent destruction of familiar buildings. Serf painted outlines across the parapet on two sides of the building too.

The NYTimes has a photo gallery and some words on the ghost bikes Times Up! and Visual Resistance have installed in places bicyclists have been killed.

According to the Department of Transportation, 109 bicyclists were killed on city streets from 2000 through 2005, and 11 more have died this year. Bicycle advocates are lobbying city officials to make New York a friendlier place for bicyclists.

While the last statement is accurate, most policies being pushed by bicycle advocates, particularly traffic relief proposals, benefit the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians alike.

You can change your name, change your look and change your friends, but you can’t change your past. It’s too bad that 205 Club, the downtown collaboration between A-Ron, Serge Becker, and Guy Jacobson may find this out the hard way. In August, in its previous incarnation as 6’s and 8’s, the club received some violations for underage drinking and drug use and must go to State Supreme Court on Tuesday to fight a possible closure. Earlier in November, the New York State Liquor Authority imposed two fines totaling $5,500 to 205 Chrystie Street for unspecified violations.

Considering the club’s legal troubles, it was quick thinking to keep out Keanu Reeves, aka FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah. It doesn’t matter that he let Bodhi surf that last wave. He’s still a narc.

New York City bike messenger, Squid, did a quick interview on the Ellen show, but not before leaving a nice skid mark across the studio floor. Perhaps that’s why Ellen “forgot” to give Squid his gift bag.

Though the recent curation of street art covering the Candle Building’s façade is mighty impressive, the uniformity and precision felt a little like wallpaper. That’s why we were a little psyched to see some of Rambo’s musings among a few other random illegal additions. Earlier, one commenter requested:

“please, somebody do some fillins over all the wheatpaste as part of this final ‘art project.’ “

It looks like an answer to this request is in the works.

Click for panorama taken on Saturday, November 20, 2006.