According to the Daily News, graffiti is on the rise, at least by number of complaints. While not the most prolific writer, MORAL is one of the names going bigger than the rest with fire extinguisher tags around Brooklyn and Manhattan. CURTIS and STER have been at it too, and someone painted a house on a house, which is pretty meta.
A NYU student puts a bit of art on the street for class, and the internet goes wild. [ANIMAL] Photo by Nick Gray
First, don’t sell self-incriminating t-shirts and second, don’t take holidays off. On Christmas Day 2006, the Made U Look crew was at work below Central Park, painting the now infamous “Cash is King” whole train. They painted ten subway cars top to bottom and end to tend, spelling out the crew’s name over 750 feet long. Xplicit Grafx, the international graffiti magazine interviewed Made U Look, helping to shed some light on their feat and confirming speculation that law enforcement actually was behind the sketchy website that popped up to sell t-shirts and a video of the hit.
According to Made U Look, the now defunct website, madeulooknyc.com, was created by “New York authorities, in an attempt to confuse and perhaps slip us up.” “We had nothing to do with any of that – website included and if it was up to us no on would have seen what we did for a very long time.” So if you had the bad sense to order one of those cheesy t-shirts, you can figure some “NYC authorities” have started a file on you.
Photographs and part of the Made U Look interview are excerpted below.
The legendary Ol Dirty Bastard lives on as a new trailer for the ODB Ason Unique documentary on the Wu Tang Clan member and man of many names hits the web. The film was directed by ODB’s cousin Raison Allah and is being released by Zu Films sometime in the future.
It came to our attention in 2006 when we saw a mural of ODB going up in Bed Stuy. Raison commissioned Victor Goldfeld to paint the mural of ODB’s infamous food stamp card for the film. Unfortunately, the mural was defaced earlier this year, but Victor Goldfeld is ready and willing to fix it up, if he can get permission.
+ Put on your gloves. Nate Hill, creator of the dead animal man is leading a free Chinatown Garbage Tour showing people how to collect dead critters and taxidermy them. (9 PM at Southeast Corner of Canal Street and Lafayette Street, Manhattan)
+ Captured, a film focused on Clayton Patterson’s documentation of the Lower East Side over the last 30 years, is screening. (6 PM at Cantor Film Center, 36 East 8th Street (off University Place), Manhattan)
Know something happening? Add it to the calendar.
Last night saw a quiet memorial ride honoring the two cyclists who were struck and killed last week. Both Alvaro Olson and Jian-Lan Zhang were killed by trucks last Wednesday, April 16th. Olson died at West 36th Street and Broadway. Zhang died on Hester and Allen Street. The memorial ride of about 25 cyclists brought flowers to the ghost bike memorials, where they were joined by the curious passing by, and paid their respects. The deaths of these cyclists, the first reported in 2008, are a sad reminder of how unforgiving the streets can be and how much more the city needs do to make them safe for everyone.
The East River is not only home to tagged up turtles, but dead bodies, and starting this summer, man-made waterfalls as well. Artist Olafur Eliasson created this Pier 35 contraption which, along with three others at the Brooklyn Bridge, Governors Island and below Brooklyn Heights, will start gushing water sometime in July. Circle Line will be operating “special in depth tours” of the waterfalls, but you can also avoid tourists and check them out from the shoreline and East River bridges for free.
Bushwick Brooklyn 2008 (mixed media on wall) by danwitz on Flickr
Artist Dan Witz has some new stickers up for Ugly New Buildings 2008. (via C-Monster)
We never heard about the human robot parade to Prospect Park on Sunday, possibly because it “wasn’t promoting, selling or marketing anything.” It was simply “just for fun” as any good robot parade should be. More photos of the robot rock by Dave Surgan are up on Flickr. [Obscene NYC]
