New York kicked Bezos out on his keester this week on Valentines Day – although Amazon will depict their withdrawal as a breakup with NYC. You should never feel bad about leaving an abusive relationship. Truth is Amazon’s sweet deal scenario was to twist both the city’s arms behind it’s back and extort $1.5 billion to $3.4 billion in tax breaks and concessions. Gurl, this kind of gun-to-the-head corporate hostage taking has got to stop. How about if Amazon just pays its fair share of taxes first?

Meanwhile the art on the streets that we keep finding in NYC tells us that a lot of people are in love, in lust, or looking for some sort of tenderness. Call it early spring fever but the feels are out there in some of these new pieces this week.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring #Dysturb, Adam Fujita, Bunny M, Dead Bradshaw, Jax and Dean, Kai, LMNOPI, Mr. Djaul, Pers Anders-Petterson, Pop Artoons, Rime MSK, The Hypsit, Theodoru, Vitruvian Truth, and Vondom Labs.

Top image: KAI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dysturb is a collective of photojournalists, writers and artists formed in 2014 to promote their own work and to highlight contemporary global issues around the world such as women’s rights, the environment, equality etc… A lofty endeavor with its heart in the right place which we support wholeheartedly. The group brought their new campaign to the streets of NYC this week. The issue this time is female genital mutilation.

The group uses the streets as their vessel to disseminate the information and to create awareness but in the process they ignore a basic tenet of the rules of the street: Respect the art that already exists on the walls. We spotted a couple of their billboard sized prints wheat pasted on top of long running murals by respected artists like Iranian brothers Icy & Sot, shown above and American/Berlinian painter James Bullough below. These are rather careless placements from visitors who don’t respect the local culture – especially in a city that has so many construction sites with plenty of available empty plywood walls. We’re sure you are all fabulous, but you are not the only ones.

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