We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.

New York Street Artist Winston Tseng cleverly pokes his finger in your eye during these days when more tepid artists stick to cute and cuddly. He has been expanding the vocabulary of the street to slickly lampoon systemic hypocrisies; employing the visual language of corporate advertising, illuminating the now common practice of manipulating populations, not just consumers.

With a brightly flat illustration style similar to friendly public service announcements, Tseng’s subtle sarcasm has the power to trigger personal threats and paranoid claims from aggrieved passersby on the street and various knee-jerk commenters on social media during this polarized period in the U.S.

In a typical poster by the street artist we see a semi-official looking public-service ad. It proposes a private, charity-funded solution to a social responsibility that once was paid by taxes – children’s education.

Now Bob and Barbie from right wing media opine that teachers are blood-suckers and public education is akin to a  socialist plot.  Meanwhile last years CARES Act fund went to the “wealthiest corporations and individuals”.

It’s so much worse than we ever imagined it would get.

In real life, school teachers are humiliated into publicly participating on their knees in a literal money-grab as entertainment during the half time show at a hockey game – so they can purchase school supplies.

That kind of sorry spectacle makes this GoFundMe parody appear as a perfectly civilized solution.

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