‘Style Wars’ Restoration Benefit Screenings - Tonight (Thursday), Brooklyn Academy of Music

I went to the U.S. Open Wednesday night and watched heavily-favored tennis superstars do what they’re supposed to: Easily crush lesser foes. In what is easily one of the best things you can do in New York City at the end of the summer, I pulled the old “Take the 7 train to the U.S. Open night session” gag with some friends and watched the two night matches. Big story of the night was the wind messing up everyone’s game.

Ok, so read about all that elsewhere. The reason I’m bringing it up as that as we were pouring out of Arthur Ashe to head to the 7 train to head back, I was looking at the entire 7 line’s trainyard under the walkway…

Seeing the trainyard at night reminded me of the film Style Wars (maybe you 12oz readers heard of it?), which reminded me to mention here that tomorrow the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is hosting several benefit screenings of the seminal doc on graffiti, Style Wars, kicking off the fundraising to save the original negatives. Apparently the master negatives of the film are starting to deteriorate, and director Henry Chalfant (Tony Silver, the other credited director, passed away in 2008) and family are trying to raise the money to restore it digitally for future generations to study. More info at http://www.stylewars.com.

They need a lot of money. $500,000.00 is the target number. No one is expecting you to drop that fresh Jacob & Co. watch you spent a house on, playa, but I’m sure every bit helps. I’m heading out to BAM with Evan Bernard for the 6:50 show, tickets are $12.50. Director Chalfant and a few writers in the film will be having a Q&A after the 6:50pm and 9:15pm screenings. If you can’t be there, consider looking into donating online at the website, starting at a very reasonable $10.

Show your support to one of the key touchstones in graffiti history.