Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
“Let’s dial down the rhetoric. Let’s work sincerely to negotiate a cease-fire. We need serious diplomacy” said no one who profits from war.
Ka-ching!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: REVS, Adam Fu, JerkFace, Sac Six, Voxx Romana, Roachi, MTA, 4Some Crew, Huetek, Angurria, Swrve, WTG Studios, Enjoy, Six Million Dollar Steve, Carlitos, Dovente, and Danny Ebru.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The streets are reflecting this moment in New York this week as artists are showing their colors. Or Ukraine’s colors, rather. Hard to sleep through the night when you know that Gotham is on the hit list if this Russian invasion turns nuclear, hard to process the idea that a cold war is never far from a hot one, despite activists best efforts for all these decades. Hard to believe that sanctions won’t damage many more people than the intended targets. Hard to believe that money-printing is never discussed in the news as THE creator of this inflation and much more inflation to come.
Let’s do everything we can to de-escalate this war, this perpetual specter.
And thank you to the street artists who are keeping the conversations alive. Also this week, new works from F**kin REVS !
Remember to Set Your Clocks Ahead One Hour Today.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adam Fujita, Fuckin REVS, Below Key, Sticker Maul, Sara Lynne-Leo, Hek Tad, Gold Loxe, Mike Raz, Smetsky Art, Hear Eye Am, Equalist, Liagam, and Mitya Pisliak.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Happy Snow Weekend!
We’re digging out from a ‘Nor’easter’ today in New York, a swirling blizzard of snow and strong winds that created such astonishing contrasts of bare ground and high-pointed drifts that kids and adults were playing together on these ledges, falling to the ground laughing.
It brings to mind the masses of Americans whose prospects and futures have been completely blown away, leaving nothing but bare soil – while bankers and corporate criminals have drifted all the wealth upwards to new stylish heights during the economic storm of the last 40 years. Feel like you are walking through two feet of snow and can never get ahead? Some would like you to think that it’s because of uncontrollable forces like the weather.
Meanwhile, it’s the calm after the storm now and we’re heading out to play in the snow this morning before it all gets dirty. It’s nice to see New York like a clean slate, full of possibility and promise. Let’s go for a walk!
And here’s our weekly interview with the streets in NYC, Miami, and Berlin; featuring ATOMS. Billy Barnacles, Boxer, Case Maclaim, Cupid, Dark Clouds, Jamie Hef, Joe Iurato, Kaynor, Klass, Modus. Smells, Ten! Tom Bob, Tony, and Wane.
Welcome the first BSA Images of the Week of 2022! How are you feeling? You’re looking great!
The street art parade marches on, perhaps ever clearer in its intent to reflect the mood, the zeitgeist, the intellectual meanderings of the artist class. In the process of demystifying the graffiti and street art scene over the few decades, we’ve long realized that there always will be surprises, no matter how much of the scene you have decoded. That’s what keeps it FREEEESSSSSSSSHHHH!
This week, as the snow is falling in dirty old NYC and as people are rescinding into their homes for another de facto Covid “lockdown”, we discover that artists are hard at work getting out their message, their id, their frustrations, their aspirations, their wit.
May this adventure never end, and may this trail never go cold.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anderson Bluu, Dorothy Gale, Ernesto Maranje, ERRE, Ethan Minsker, Fake Banksy, Gold Loxe, Ill Surge, J. Cole, Johann Art, Marka 27, Miss 17, NEST, Praxis VGZ, Salami Doggy, and Winsten Tseng .
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The weather is tropical this weekend, like we’re expecting a hurricane – ominous and windy. Maybe its our ongoing fear of runaway inflation, which Fed Chair Jerome Powell is trying to make us forget he called ‘transitory’. That should be the word of 2021. Transitory. Like fanny packs worn diagonally across the chest, or Dua Lipa.
Any great Christmas classics running through your head this year? Christmas in Hollis from Run DMC? Mele Kalikimaka? Mariah Carey? Sorry, we’re in the mood and all these lights and little wonderland displays in the windows of people’s apartments throughout Brooklyn are making us feel romantic for the season, even though most people we know are scaling back this year.
The city’s vaccination rate is 78, and the mayor is requiring more vaccine and mask mandates in private companies and schools. Let’s hope it works, brothers and sisters.
So here’s our regular interview with the street, this week including 4SomeCrew, Buff Monster, Calicho, DAK 907, DOT DOT DOT, Drecks, ERRE, MIDABI, Not Banksy, Paper Monster, Paul Richard, Praxis VGZ, Roachi, Swrve, Urban Ruben, and Zexor.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
A new hurricane, a new school year, a new variant, a new governor, a new fall of Saigon, and a new anti-vaccination song from rock guitar god Eric Clapton, who doesn’t want you to put suspect chemicals into your body. Presumably, cocaine is still okay, however, if you want to get down, down on the ground.
The summer storms keep coming, and yet somehow so does the incredible show of creativity on our streets; the celebration of murals and graffiti burners and painters and sculptors and characters and opinions and cogitations. However hot and steamy and hard New York can be sometimes, it also is positively ebullient and inspiring. We know our many differences are our greater asset, our combined aspirations a stunning new possibility.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A. Smith, Captain Eyeliner, China, Cody James, CP Won, David Puck, Gabriel Specter, Huetek, Iquene, Jason Naylor, Jitr!, Amanda Valdes, Lorenzo Masnah, M.R.S.N., Not Your Muse, Peachee Blue, Sara Lynne Leo, Sasha Velour, Say No Sleep, Tyler Ives, and Winston Tseng.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Did you catch the celebrities singing in Central Park last night before the rains of Hurricane Henri reached New York? Talk about electricity in the air! New York is a magnet for a pretty face, it would appear, and a grizzly or wild one too; and our street art proves it. Just a quick survey of murals in Brooklyn this week turns up many a fun face.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anthony Zpadilla, CP Won, Damien Mitchell, David Puck, Dwag Star, Jeyde, Lorenzo Masnah, Mister Alek, NotBanksy, Numak1, Outer Source, Outer Source, Reme821, Sef01, Sipros, United Crushers, and Vers718.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.
Can you feel the power of July’s full Buck Moon that arrived this weekend? Not to be confused with the full buck-naked moon; those are the guys climbing the fence to skinny dip in McCarren Pool.
Looks like the new George Floyd statue in Flatbush, Brooklyn got defaced by racists but will be restored and move to Union Square in Manhattan. The vandals must have been mad about all the confederate statues that have been coming down around the country.
You’ll be thrilled to learn that two self-driving cars were tested in New York this week, and no skateboarders or seniors were mowed down. The footage looks pretty tame, to tell the truth. Let’s try the test on any average drunken Saturday night and see how the rabble-rousers fare. Truthfully, a driverless car is exactly the way it feels taking a yellow cab sometimes.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fu, Adrian Wilson, Allison Dayka, Baston, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, Comik, David Puck, SEK@DX, Denis Ouch, Duel Heck, Flore, Foxito, La Plaga Invade, Lorenzo Masnah, Lunge Box, Rex Bantron, S. Cifu, Sinclair The Vandal, Sticky Monger, Sule Cant Cook, and Westgard.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Happy 4th of July! See you on the Hudson River for the fireworks tonight. We are also cognizant that the rich inheritance of justice and freedom has not been extended to all people historically: “What to the Slave is 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech.
“…. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
– Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York 1852
Remember when you used to say that someone or something was “ON FIRE!”, and that meant it was something good, unable to be stopped?
This week half of the United States and a third of Canada were on fire, it would appear, including an underwater bloom of fire in the Gulf of Mexico that was being sprayed by nearby boats with, um, water.
While the West of the US was having an exceptional drought and extreme heat, when you looked north to Canada, you witnessed 710,000 lightning strikes; Western Canada was a literal firestorm. According to The Guardian, “The previous week, northern Europe and Russia also sweltered in an unprecedented heat bubble. June records were broken in Moscow (34.8C), Helsinki (31.7C), Belarus (35.7C), and Estonia (34.6C).” On the east coast of the US, we suffered 4 days of a heatwave, and many graffiti writers found themselves banished to underground tunnels to keep cool – which was okay with almost everybody.
Remember when you used to say that things were DOPE until you saw your cousin get hooked and spiral downward unglamorously? DOPE took on a new connotation after that. Maybe we have to stop saying, “Yo, that girl is FIRE!” because, you know, fire. That thing that is scorching the Earth, but not because of Climate Change, you freak.
But the graffiti and street art we have been finding here: some of these are FIRE!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Arcadio, Benjamin Keller, BMC, Cdre, Ditty, Luke Dragon, LWart, Mena, MeresOne, MHI, MoiOne, Rat Rockster, RH Doaz, and Scartoccio.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! These are the beautiful long summer days that we all wait for. As New York frees itself from the shackles of Covid and our cloistered lives alone the sense of freedom to explore our city and commune with its fabulous chaos is sweeter still. But suddenly restaurants can’t sell you a bottle of booze, so maybe we also will stop seeing sidewalk sales of cocktails as well. Of course with legal weed in New York, people will still be strange and slightly hallucinated and punching random other New Yorkers, no doubt.
When it comes to freewheeling handmade one of a kind art in the public sphere, we still follow the beat on the street.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Drecks, Le Crue, Mirs Monstrengo, Modomatic, Mort Art, SacSix, SMiLE, Sticker Maul, and TV Head ATX.
Welcome to Brooklyn, where the lilacs are in bloom and people are smoking weed in the park, like it was 1985 or something. Remember summer of ’85 in Washington Square Park with rambunctious teens backward skating in the dry fountain on roller skates and people were blasting “Shout” by Tears for Fears on their boxes?
Pro Palestinian supporters were marching through southern Brooklyn this weekend, and New Yorkers are talking about this new conflict daily on the street. New York Mayoral candidate Catherine Garcia looks tough as hell and sounds like some paranormal AI robot in her new ad (Video). Also her “Break Glass” metaphor reminds us of some early 2010s Enzo and Nio street pieces. Remember those? New York City Democratic mayoral candidates Ray McGuire and Shaun Donovan both proved themselves to be blithering fools this week by guessing the median home in Brooklyn costs less than $100,000. When, 1990?
As the COVID positivity rate in New York dove toward 1% this week, we’re all encouraging each other to take off masks, but no one is sure when and where it’s completely safe, except when taking a shower by yourself. On the street and on the Subway the results are mixed, with most New Yorkers opting for being safe.
In graffiti/street art news you might enjoy this great interview by Liz Munzell “Street Art in the Age of Basquiat: Fab 5 Freddy and Lee Quiñones on Post-Graffiti Pop Soup” and this one published in Hyperallergic; The Street Wisdom of Al Díaz, a First-Generation Graffiti Artist.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 7 Line Art Studio, Acne, Cabaio, Freakotrophic, G Money NFT, Jet, JJ Veronis, Jowl, Luke Dragon 911, No Sleep, Save Art Space, and Zephyr.
Nomadland won the Oscar for the best movie this year, a fact that you may not know because A. The Oscars are nearly completely irrelevant, and B. Covid era-awards programs have been the equivalent of watching your dad unclogging the kitchen drain. An unvarnished story about a growing ecosystem of Americans living in cars, trucks, and RVs in parking lots across the country, Nomadland toes a line between blaming neo-liberal vulture capitalism/ de-industrialization of the last 40 years and dipping into the American myths of people who just want to live their life free and unencumbered.
Meanwhile, in New York more people are finding the rent to be too high and are moving into RVs, according to The Daily News this week. In the article they speak with Giovanni, a first responder whom we were probably clapping for last year when he was saving lives from Covid.
In the article Giovanni says, “I was an EMT… you want to talk struggling‚ that was really rough,” he explained. “I had to have somebody rent out my living room just to be able to cover the rent. That’s how hard it was. After doing that for three, four years, I was like, I’m done with this. I quit. I’m over it.”
“I went to college, I did pretty much everything that I was told I was supposed to do in order to have a good life. And it didn’t turn out that way,” he explained.
As the moneyed Real Estate kingpins are fighting against extending a rent moratorium in the city to August 31 and to end moratoriums across the country, you have to wonder where everyone will go once the stimulus checks have dried up, inflation kicks in, and landlords evict people.
Meanwhile, we’re following the street art in a number of neighborhoods in New York this week – and wondering where the topical or political works are. The current generation who are putting work on the streets may venture into politics, but only identity politics. BLM, trans rights, that sort of thing.
New York is headed toward 70% vaccinated soon and the city is actually talking about offering to vaccinate tourists! Soon you can go to the Met, see a Broadway show, eat dinner in Little Italy, get cursed out by a homeless guy, and get a stab in the arm from Pfizer! New York, New York! It’s a wonderful town!
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 2 Much, Armyan, Cautious5, Cekis, City Kitty, Cramcept, Denton Burrows, GIZ, Healer, Homesick, Leviticus, LNE Crew, Lunge Box, MalincheArt, MeresOne, MrBbaby, No Sleep, Paul Richard, Ponzi, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Smart, and Stikki Peaches.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
