Later yesterday, we caught a few photos of the subway car painted to promote the Adidas End to End Project and its sneakers. The display was temporary, and by midnight the car had been loaded onto a truck and taken away. Because sea creatures might be influenced to tag up with squid ink, it’s unlikely this car will end up as a coral reef like so many Redbirds. What happens to an old, albeit fake, subway car?
Is this deja-vu? Just like in 2005, when he attempted to stop Marc Ecko’s Chelsea block party which promoted his video game, Getting Up, with graffiti artists painting flat subway car mock-ups, Queens councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. is going after Adidas. As part of their End to End Project they’ve invited seven graffiti artists to paint a fake subway car across from their store.
“Graffiti has nothing to do with sneakers, so basically it’s just another despicable corporation trying to look edgy by promoting a crime in search of profits,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), a longtime anti-graffiti crusader.
Unless he’s making a bigger statement about sneaker companies co-opting graffiti, it’s hard to miss the graffiti/sneaker connection (ie. graffiti covering every shoe in the Adidas collection). And we’re pretty sure Adidas is promoting the sneakers with the crime graffiti artists painting legal panels and not the other way around.
You can see the artists including SILOETTE, SMART, SCIEN, CAN2, ATOM, SKORE, and RIME (who we recently interviewed) painting all day on the northwest corner Houston and Lafayette St.
Update: Adidas one upped Ecko with a three dimensional subway car model, not a plywood cutout.
Adidas press photo and sneaker by Rime.
Adidas Originals and Wax Poetics sponsored New York Breaks and Beats last night in the Adidas store in SoHo. DJ Kool Herc headed up the turntables while Chuck D, of Public Enemy, hosted the event. Unfortunately, we missed a photo of Kwame, the boy genius, wearing an original rope chain.
