12ozProphet

The Red Bull BC One, the premier international, individual B-Boy battle will be held in NYC next Wednesday.
I’ve been very lucky to have been invited to attend 3 of the last 4 of these amazing events—in Berlin, Sao Paulo
and Paris so I’m really looking forward to seeing the dancers from around the world battle it out on my home turf.

Today, in a related event, the Hip Hop Theater Festival presented B-Boys Ken Fury, Whorah, Sweet Lu, and Frankie
Flave in Times Square. A very appreciative audience gamely stood in the rain for an hour with their umbrellas to
watch the b-boyz demonstrate moves and speak about their lives. My friend Nika Kramer and I will be blogging about
the BC One all week.  You can check out more photos and info on the Red Bull BC One site.

Last night Aiko and I went to the opening of Ron English’s show, Immortal Underground at the Opera Gallery on
115 Spring Street. The show is an incredible mix of paintings and sculpture all produced over the past year. The
evening’s highlight was a surprise appearance of creatively costumed cowgirls and an obese Ronald Macdonald.
There was no shortage of photographers to record the moment.

Last night Henry Chalfant and I made our way out to Staten Island for the All City Black Book show
organized by On Two and Lask One VO5. The event celebrated the release of Graffiti New York by
Eric Felisbret and his brother Luke.  I first met Eric in the late 70’s in Dondi’s basement and he was
already knowledgeable about NYC graff. About ten years ago he started 149th St,  one of the first and
most extensive graffiti sites on the web. His new book is the culmination of many years of research and
documentation and is destined to become an essential sourcebook for serious graf heads.

The event was held at Charlie Balducci’s impressive NYC Arts Cypher, a space painted floor to ceiling
by local artists.. OnTwo had been telling me for ages about the lively Staten Island hip hop scene so it
was great to finally get a chance to experience it in person.

On Thursday, Shepard Fairey launched his Levi’s clothing colab with a live installation
in Times Square (which I unfortunately missed) and a signing of a 4 poster suite printed
with both front and back images. The posters were free with a T-Shirt purchase—a great
deal. The 50’s era “Stay Up Girl” with spray can is the best!

I’d heard a buzz about an up and coming arts district in Miami so when a friend invited me for a visit,
I jumped at the chance to check it out. Wynwood, an area in downtown Miami, is full of warehouses
formerly used by shoe importers that have recently been turned into galleries. There are dozens of
galleries in a 15 block radius. The two story warehouses have windowless, flat walls—perfect for murals.

In 2007 BOOKSIIII founded an organization called Primary Flight with the idea of bringing street artists
to Wynwood during Art Basel to paint on these walls. Last year around 100 artists showed up to paint.
The concept caught on and developers, gallery owners and artists are collaborating to foster a creative
community.

Last weekend was lucky to have BOOKSIIII and his partner TYPOE as my guides in Wynwood. They drove
me around and in a very short time I got to see an tons of legal and illegal art. Some of the commisssioned
walls are amazing but I was particularly taken with the pieces painted in an abandoned building where
squatters lived surrounded by walls full of graffiti. As of now, Wynwood lacks the kind of vibrant urban street
life I love to photograph in New York and Baltimore. It should be interesting to watch the arts district evolve.

Photographer Luz Martin is visiting NYC from Valencia, Spain celebrating her new book, Textura: Valencia Street Art.
It’s due out any minute. Yesterday we headed up to the Bronx to visit TATS Cru at The Point and check out some graff
in the area. Bio, Nicer,  BGee 183, and twins How and Nosm are completing a humongous banner mural for the Hong Kong
shoe company, Hogan. A block away was an even larger, freshly painted TATS wall full of original characters and intricate
details. If you’re planning a visit to NYC, Hunts Point in the Bronx is a great place to start.

For nearly four years, I’ve been taking the bus from NYC to Baltimore every other weekend. I’m trying to
document SoWeBo,  a fascinating, if beleaguered, southwest neighborhood.  I haven’t seen a lot of graffiti
there probably because the cops are overly vigilant due to excessive drug dealing in the area. Yesterday
I met some graf heads who kindly took me on a little tour.

SoWeBo boasts the first mile of public railroad track ever laid in the entire US. We walked along that track
for more than a mile passing some nifty hobo monikers on a laid up freight train. Then we slid down an
embankment to another set of tracks which passed under some bridges. Turns out that’s where writers go
to piece.  Thanks guys for guiding me!

Photographers came out in force yesterday for the opening of the Bronx Museum show,
Urban Archives: That was Then, This is Now. The curators had mined our files for photos
and artifacts from the years when the Bronx looked like a war zone. They paired this
material with some amazing, large scale, present day photos of the Grand Concourse by
Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao.

Rokafella and Kwikstep performed with Roka’s students from The Door in the West Village.
Check out Mare 139’s photos of the exhibit up over on his blog. I’ll put some of the dancers here.

Younity, the women’s art collective founded by TooFly and Alice Mizrachi opened its third annual show
last night at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center on 107 Suffolk Street in Manhattan.
To quote from their press release: Running until October 23, 2009, the exhibit is not the average “white-wall”
art show; the all-female collective will transform the art space into an eco-funhouse of raw materials and
street art. Elements such as graffiti, photography, design and construction are used to connect ideas about
consumerism, environmentalism, health, and renewable energy.

My contribution to the show were a few black and white photos that I took on the Lower Eastside in the late ‘70’s
showing kids being creative with found materials. I’m delighted that these photos are still relevant in today’s
electronic world. Younity cleverly displayed these photos on cardboard -perfect! I couldn’t resist buying a bold
stencil image by NIZ of the three pioneering B-Girlz, Asia One, Lady Champ and Aiko. I am happy to see women
in the arts, and in hip hop in particular, claiming and documenting their own place in history.

Rain threatened but ultimately did not dampen the mood at yesterday’s Urban Arts Fest in Bushwick, an event
presented by Mark Batty Publishers. The venue was Castle Braid, a brand new apartment complex in the heart
of what used to be one of the most desolate neighborhoods in the city.  Street and graff artists decorated exterior
walls and hung their work in the freshly painted but still empty apartments.

Bushwick has become one of the last affordable hoods for artists to live and work in New York City. Although I
participated in the festival and am always glad to see street art promoted, I did wonder who was promoting whom.
I can only hope that the present and future developers of Bushwick repay the creative people who brought them
there by designing buildings where artists and others of modest means can afford to live.
















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