Saturday Afternoon in Long Island City: Fan Appreciation Day Rally to Save 5 Pointz

(Video courtesy hannington16) (Video courtesy Christian Murray) (Video courtesy videosporalex)

Monday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Graffiti-Free NYC Van on Leonard Street

We were on our way to return some books to the wonderful Leonard branch of the Brooklyn Public Library around 3 p.m. when we saw, for the first time, the Graffiti-Free NYC van with two people from the Department of Sanitation getting ready to clean off a building on Leonard Street, just south of the library on Devoe.

When we came out maybe ten minutes later, the van, the city workers and the graffiti were gone.

But nearby tags remained.

Thursday Night in Greenpoint: "Graffiti Japan" Launch Party at Alphabeta

On a summerlike October evening after a pleasant Yom Kippur, we sauntered over from Dumbo Books HQ to catch an early couple of hours of the 7 p.m.-midnight launch party for Japan Graffiti by Remo Camerota at Greenpoint's store for all your urban art needs, Alphabeta.

As the promo material we got says:

Japan has always been a breeding ground for innovative approaches to Western traditions, such as cinema and baseball. Another example includes graffiti, which covers the buildings and walls of Japan’s largest cities, as well as the more rural areas. While graffiti in Japan shares many of the same characteristics with examples from other parts of the world, distinct cultural aspects of Japan, from Kanji to popular anime characters, set Japanese graffiti apart. Tokyo-based photographer Remo Camerota has captured these culturally unique aspects of Japanese graffiti, and in doing so has befriended some of the country’s major graffiti artists. Colorful spreads and intimate interviews provide a detailed examination of Japanese graffiti, a subject that has yet to dominate the graffiti book market.

Remo is an accomplished photographer working for people like Kiss, Jello Biafra and many magazines. Remo’s photographs are also included in the Kiss Alive 4 CD and DVD, Kiss and Make up and Speaking in Tongues DVD, which he co-directed with Gene Simmons.

In his native Australia, he's known just as much as a film director, animator and videographer who put his stamp on the popular Australian extreme sports TV show Xtreme and a similar show on South American TV, Not Recommended Behavior. His production company, Whitewall Studios, does everything from film and TV to graphic design and animation.

After we showed our ID to the nice man in front of Alphabeta who "doesn't like to discriminate" and so even asks alter kockers for proof age before he stamps our wrist PAID, we headed for the outdoor courtyard with its white walls, where we joined a crowd of hipsters enjoying free PBR (with a dollar tip) to watch five graffiti artists work live on the white walls.

It was a gorgeous night, with temperatures so mild we were in shirtsleeves and a gibbous moon with a pale halo low in the southern sky, just above the walls of Alphabeta's structure.


Graffiti Japan is published by the Manhattan-based Mark Batty Publisher, which produces luscious volumes on design, pop culture, street graphics and urban art, including such other international explorations of graffiti and street culture as Protest Graffiti: Mexico: Oaxaca and Urban Iran.

Hanging out in the courtyard, we noticed most of the five graffiti artists who worked on their elaborate taggings and designs at various heights around the white walls - some were at ground level, with one on a stool, another on a stepladder, another on a real tall ladder up high - favored Belton spray.

Three of them wore white face masks, ans we hung out on the metal steps leading up to Alphabeta's second floor, trying to play Addison Dewitt to some young Japanese woman's Marilyn Monroe, we realized we were getting a contact high from the spray paint.

So we moved to watch a ground-based artist doing an elaborate portrait of a busty nurse with Medusa-like hair. We were fascinated by how he peeled off black tape to make what would become the white of her eyes and shadows in her face and tight-fitting nurse's uniform.

We were even more impressed when that graffiti artist turned out to be Remo. Finished, he went into the front store, where he stood and talked to some of us who were getting the lush book autographed.

In the backroom beats from VDRK and Bradley D of Famous Friends were attracted a larger crowd.

It was turning into a really great party, with live breakdancing from the USA Breakdancing team and a special live 80s hip-hop mash-up set by NYC electronic artist KRTS, who'd earlier been standing by us in the courtyard admiring the live graffiti.

We always enjoy going to Alphabeta, and on the two stops home on the G train we were admiring the photos and fascinated by the interviews with some well-known artists like DETACH, SHAWL and KENGA in Graffiti Japan. The party would go on for hours after we left, and we're sure it only got better for those younger, hipper and less drowsy than us.

Saturday Night in Greenpoint: "The Legends of Style" Show at Alphabeta

(Exhibit photos courtesy of BH-The Boys; please see his Flickr album of the show plus comments)

We've just walked back to Dumbo Books HQ from The Legends of Style exhibition and opening reception at Alphabeta, Greenpoint's suddenly-famous street gallery. Dawdling around McCarren Park, we managed to hear quite clearly the last 25 minutes of the Sonic Youth show at the pool as we watched a desultory kids' soccer game and Latino families enjoying some Labor Day weekend barbecue and the view of the Empire State Building, tonight done up in blue and white. Goodbye, pool, for now!

We very much enjoyed the time we spent at our first time at Alphabeta and were quite impressed with the store and the artworks. Although Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), called Alphabeta "the equivalent of creating a criminal supply shop," we can report that strict adherence to government regulations caused them to ask even doddering old men for their ID's before anyone entered.

Luckily, our Arizona driver's license having proven that we were past the legal age to drink and buy spray cans - not that we do either - we got a scarlet "OK 21" graffiti'd on our right hand, allowing us to enter the world of Alphabeta. (When we start tagging in 2014, we plan to be known be known as 3X OK 21.)

Legends of Style, presented by Joshua Ivory, featured the work of old school writers such as STAY HIGH 149, FUZZ ONE, RIFF170, BUTCH2 TFP, PART TDS, PESO 131, KOOL 131, NIC 707, CHAIN 3, NOC 167, MIN ONE, DUSTER UA, TACK FBA, and DEZ who were ubiquitous to all of straphangers who endured the horror that was the subway system back in the bankrupt Beame administration.

DJ Kay Slay (formerly DEZ as featured in the 1982 documentary Style Wars and also formerly our cuz Keith Grayson) and The Fearless Four ("Rocking It") deftly provided the beats for a nice-sized diverse crowd, many of whom were taking pics.

It made us quite nostalgic to see the artful stylings of the legendary FUZZ ONE, for example, well-lit and hanging in on an art gallery wall more than thirty years after we first encountered it riding the IRT from the Junction to Manhattan back in the day when the 3 and 4 trains went to Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College. In the '70s, when we were both a lot younger, FUZZ ONE did his tagging on the Bronx end of the line with crews like The Ebony Dukes and The Fantastic Partners.

And among the many works of aerosol art hanging in both Alphabeta's roomy back gallery and the pleasant huge outdoor space, was one by our old friend STAY HIGH 149, sometimes called the Godfather of Graffiti, who was singled out by Norman Mailer in his brilliant book The Faith of Graffiti for his top-to-bottom tags.

One writer has called STAY HIGH 149

one of the most famous, influential and admired writers in the history of New York City aerosol art. Most notably admired for his unique tag. He drew a smoking joint as the cross bar for his "H". Each tag was accompanied by a stick figure from the television series The Saint. He also frequently wrote the phrase "Voice of the Ghetto". His logo/name came to define "street cool" for many subsequent generations of writers.

And his work's still cool, even when not in the street.

It was a really nice gathering last night. The music was good, the people were friendly, and the art was exhilarating. Since moving back to New York two years ago we've developed a number of allergies, but thankfully Krylon isn't one of them.

(Photo of Legends of Style courtesy Art Jones; please see his album on Flickr for more)

Alphabeta, Brooklyn’s only spot to buy cans (they are displayed in locked metal cages), is a wonderful addition to the neighborhood, not the menace portrayed by Councilmember Vallone. As Margot Adler's NPR report we heard a while back said about the view that equates aerosol art with vandalism:

But recently, the Tate Modern Museum in London had graffiti artists paint the building.

Andrew Michael Ford, the director of the Ad Hoc Art Gallery in Brooklyn, says he knows street art has come of age when there are art shows like the one at the Tate:

"It sent a wave around the world that it's legitimate, relevant and people need to pay attention to it," says Ford, who adds that he believes graffiti art and other forms of street art will be appearing in more museums in the future.

The people who run Alphabeta want to ensure that the store is a success by riding that wave. Its founders hope that it will be as much an art space and event space as it is a store.

We understand where Councilmember Vallone is coming from (besides Astoria). We're older than he is and remember that the tagging on trains and everywhere back in the bad old days of the '70s seemed to be another sign that New York City was falling apart and in chaos. But it wasn't.

As Norman Mailer, the Brooklyn Heights-based genius we had the pleasure of meeting a number of times and whom we read with pleasure from adolescence on, wrote:

. . . we do not know with what instruments we will draw in years to come nor by which materials. Will it be by the laser of a laser up on the canvas of a bubble cloud chamber that gangs of artists will shift the patterns of the atom, and do we have a clue to the beauties of growth and malignancy we will yet create and in which arenas? . . .

Perhaps that is the unheard echo of graffiti, the vibration of that profound discomfort it arouses, as if the unheard music of its proclamation and/or its mess, the rapt intent seething of its foliage, is the herald of some oncoming apocalypse less and less far away. Graffiti lingers on our subway door as a memento of what it may well have been, our first art of karma, as if indeed all the lives ever lived are sounding now like the bugles of gathering armies across the unseen ridge.

(Storefront photo courtesy of the divine Miss Heather, Greenpoint's premier blogger)

You can see the Legends of Style show at Alphabeta through September 26. Check out the store and see for yourself what Charlie Halsey, Leif McIlwaine and their crew have done with it. And check out the work of some amazing street artists. We're grateful for all of them. Isn't life wonderful!