Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
The city of New York is hot, clammy, steamy, and caked with grime. It smells like fish, marijuana, musty A/C exhaust, curry, piss, fresh-cut grass, melting pavement, aerosol spray, watermelon, cucumbers, mint, fried zeppole, Axe body spray, laundromat detergent, and pizza. With this oppressive heat, the ‘crazy’ dial seemed turned up – some people on the street appeared to be delusional with baked brains and insufficient hydration. In its chaotic way, the street never stops moving. People are herded onto our crowded, damp, and sticky subway system with its pumping kinetic energy and no coherent schedule, our new airy modern electric tandem buses with chilly automatic voices, our electric bikes and scooters of every design with big puffy tires or small bagel sized ones, our statement cars and bloated SUVs with dark windows, our swerving and sleek skateboards, and our white box trucks slaughtered with wild aerosol sprayed styles and family business-named signage like Dragon Good Luck Delight and Bayridge Appliance Repair.
Graffiti and street art keep popping up and accompany New Yorkers to their next stoop sale, pickle ball game, house party, dinner party, or dog’s birthday party. If this visual feast disappeared, we would all be confused, a piece of our cultural DNA excised. For us, this is the proper visual language of New York, certainly better than most of the new architecture popping up like middle fingers, a rash of uninspiring rectangles formed by mediocrity, their design potential sapped by greed and spreadsheets.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring City Kitty, Chris RWK, Homesick, Degrupo, Kooky Spook, Muebon, Epic Uno, RX Skulls, MCA, EXR, CKONE, RZB, BILX, JEMZ, Joshua Montes, and Soupy.