Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: armani, art, chanel, coffee and cigarettes, dash snow, death, dies, graffiti, heroin, hong kong, irak, mafia, mario sorrenti, muse, nyc, overdose, sacer, stephen marche, street art, ZEVS
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So Dash Snow aka Saker Irak died of an overdose recently, RIP. Some say he’s already being Basquiatised, and probably not a minute too soon. Stephen Marche fittingly points out in a fairly caustic article, “Basquiat’s hedonism fuelled his creativity, but for Snow hedonism was the creativity.” He’s already not one, but two four letter words and surely an adjective (or more fittingly, adverb) can’t be far off? Photos aside I couldn’t dig much of his art but as a person(a) he’s fascinating – for me maybe the ultimate embodiment of the downtown art scene today. |
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fun, fun-o-meter, future gutter status, ideas, jake bronstein, nyc, zoomdoggle
A little gumball-esque machine that vends fun? Incredible! From the guy at Zoomdoggle which in itself comes replete with its own push-button fun generator. (It’s pink too).
I used to do something similar with a little glass jar with a makeshift pastel cardstock and tissue paper lid-with-coinslot (yeah it was mad girly). Instead of money though I’d drop in one liners written on cigarette rolling papers then screwed up into a tiny ball, to be retrieved for future songs or writings. A kind of piggybank of ideas, if you will, albeit probably of the superpretentious will-to-adjectivise type. I’d kind of love to read some of them now, but it’s sitting on my desk at home in Dubai.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: balloons, brooklyn, cartoons, electrical tape, nyc, onomatopoeia, public art, street art
I’ve never seen anything like this before – onomatopoeic street art, and made with balloons? Presumably with added pop!s or maybe whizzzzes at the demise of the balloon. From Brooklyn based artist DBILLY. This seems to be the first work he’s done with balloons, but theres some sweet illustration based stuff. And something else I’ve never seen – though it’s probably been done before – words made with electrical tape. Interesting in that it looks photoshopped, but isn’t; I’d love to see this from afar.
Filed under: art | Tags: human mirrors, improv everywhere, nyc, pranks, stunts, subway, twins
How ill is this? In which Improv Everywhere gathered eight sets of identical twins for a NYC subway ride, lining them all up in once car sitting opposite each other, much to the consternation/ amusement of the other passengers. They got them to wear identical clothes and accessories too, to boot. Kind of wish I’d come across this earlier when it was still happening. [via urban prankster]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: city, flowers, headspace, jeff lewis, nyc, walking
| It’s true – I often navigate my way through the city using Jeff Lewis songs. Last night I walked well over a hundred blocks and several avenues across the island uptown from Alphabet city. It was kind of wonderful, seeing the districts and the people out on the streets change as I traipsed northwards. Replete with several creepers and the token underdressed sobbing girl. Mostly though, I was just tired. Somewhere in the early 100s I bought myself flowers and my feet really hurt by that point but I was happy. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever done that, save for an orchid i had for several weeks, maybe months of my first year here. It’s a pretty bougie thing to do, maybe ameliorated only in small part by my having to stick them in an empty soda bottle. (Soda? Pop? What a very American word. I guess I would normally say soft drink, except that I seem to associate soft drinks with cans). |  |
Filed under: art, photographer | Tags: consumerism, karma, nyc, personality crisis, romain laurent, subways
Once upon a time – I don’t remember when – I put one of those stencil label things on one of my banged-up computer speakers to read “YOUR KARMA IS LEAKING“. I believe it’s flowing quite nicely these days though, with giving away tickets to tomorrows to-be- Friday’s incredible Sonic Youth & Feelies show. Plus the whole weekend bidoun Arabic part is pretty sick. So no, definitely not leaking but joyously brimming over and spilling out around corners (karma’s flexible like that, see), yes. Kind of like these amazing images by Romain Laurent that I came across via the artist and his model.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, gaia, gentrification, nyc, pigs, street art
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Again with the pigs huh. I don’t know what it is – maybe the years of living in a Muslim country where pork is considered to be haram, and thus relegated to a sad section of the Spinneys/ supermarket of choice? I remember being little and getting a video of Babe the movie nearly confiscated at Dubai Airport Customs once. Not that I even eat meat at all. What I do know is that this print from street artist (and as it transpires, bang-up painter and photographer too) Gaia is kind of amazing.
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This is what I was thinking last summer
What do summer stories look like? Wanting it to be all brownstones and pounding sun and melting ice-cream, dripping sweat à la Do the right thing? Wanting mad stories mining the same enticing microcosm captured in polaroids long bike rides and making vegan brownies and learning and living and loving more than you can take it? All the hippies and the punks and the skinheads and the skaters? I don’t know, or even understand it, that, or maybe still this, nostalgia for a lifestyle that isn’t mine but seems so imbued with everything I would want it to be. Scuffed lino floors and the fuzzy green felt in my head but cold marble and concrete and prickly Astroturf underfoot instead?
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Well I’m in NYC for the summer now and truth be told, I kind of miss Dubai. I have the scuzzy linoleum underfoot (with PeptoBismol pink doors for good measure) and the crushingly damp smackdown of a city summer without AC. Perhaps everything looks better on celluloid? Right angled between two fans competing for torrid air, with no ice cream trucks in sight but hypersweet coconut sorbet in my fridge, all the same. |
Stale coffee out of thrifted wineglasses for want of mugs. Sometimes iced from the expresso machine with an exactly frothing stainless steel pitcher, with soymilk because its owner is a vegan. Which used to taste kind of weird in coffee but will taste like summer come September.
| Lying on dangerously wired Amsterdam Ave rooftops, looking down on the summer storage companies and electoral politics we collectively love to hate. Shisha on the steps afterwards, matching flavour to ice cream. Never actually making it to the park to read; not finishing Young Stalin, wondering if everything looks better in writing, too. Passing around Bed on the deflated subway home instead. |  |
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Sour cherry juice and dolalr bin pita bread. Being unable to decipher the history of Gaza and explorer Ibn Battuta from uploaded Arabic history shows. Suspecting it would be facilitated by vocab for tomorrow’s test. Remembering the ridiculous Dubai mall instead. Meanwhile, there’s a sweet 3-part documentary on Dubai and its rather seedy underside, Do Buy!, which describes itself as “An ethnographic film on the city, its disenfranchised workers, utopian architecture, and consumerist heaven of shopping malls.” Rather wonderful, this. |
