Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The masks are coming out this week, and not just for the ICE agents. Costumes will be everywhere, and cosplayers will suddenly blend into the crowd. Exaggerated lips, hair, and boobs will no longer be the exclusive domain of drag clubs and Mar-a-Lago parties. Thousands of mini-Spider-Men and a million princesses will be knocking on doors and turning up on Ring cameras across the land.
Here in New York, we’re accustomed to extremes in fashion and personality, despite the dulling effect of gentrification on so many neighborhoods. We like our graffiti and street artists to get in on the act, entertaining us with Halloween creatures, ad hoc horror stories, and colorful personalities on the street. It all adds to the buildup to next Saturday, when thousands will descend on the Village for the annual Halloween Parade.
Hope your days are crisp and sunny, and your nights are spooktacular.
Here is our weekly interview on the street, with Andre Trenier, BK Foxx, Chaz, IMK, NYC Kush Co, Optimo NYC, Ski, Too Fly, and Wooley Nick.
Where is the mafia news? Have you noticed how there is no news anymore about the mafia in the US? No sting operations, uncovered networks, perp walks, or wagging tongues? The New York tabloids used to go for days about Don this and Don that, accompanied by blurry surveillance photos in black and white. Did the mafia disappear? All our companies and industries and institutions are relatively free of corruption now, right?
Now our gripping concerns across the country are wokeism, racism, transphobia, ableism, ageism, pronouns, immigrants on the border, the government itself, abortion, and gun control. There are two teams, two sides; One is patently evil, and the other clearly is virtuous. Patriot vs Terrorist. Your solemn, weighty decision is to pick which team you are on and to join in the great debate as we head into election season, evidence of our thriving democracy! Go Team Good!
This week we wander through the seemingly emptier streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, The Village, and Soho to discover what street artists are bringing to their audience with earnest amor de primavera. The results are bracing, racing, effete, mysterious, hip hop, heady, graphic, and subversive: even as the flowering trees and ground vegetation is abloom, and the April rains have been prodigious.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Praxis, CRKSHNK, VOZ, Lexi Bella, Pear, Zexor, CP Won, Ollin, Phetus88, Eternal Possessions, Humble, Font147, and Whatifier.
It’s Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and we proudly declare that Black Lives Matter. One day we won’t have to say it because it will be prominent and evident in people’s actions, but until then, we must continue.
We found some great stuff on the street this week – strong, simple works that make their statement quickly as you zoom by. Perhaps you pause and consider, but this is the city, bro, and you are busy.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: REVS, BK Foxx, Nina Chanel Abney, 1010, Zexor, CP Won, Glare, Hip Hop is My Religion, Pulp, Zaver, Jim Tozzi, Martymart54, Medi, Rothko Rowdy, Detor Lak, Indigo Kids, Tocer, MTA Original, and a poem by Adi Helman.
Happy Holidays! We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA readers, friends, and family for all of your support in 2022. We have selected some of our favorite shots by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and we’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
In the terminology of our pop hagiography, there can be no doubt which portrait appears in the most murals throughout our borough – Christopher George Latore Wallace, better known by his stage names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie. 25 years after his death, you see Biggie all over Brooklyn, and he truly is a king.
In other NYC news, do you ever feel like a slowly boiling frog? NYPD is talking about partnering with Amazon’s Ring network; the New York Times explains that all those 5G network towers going up on the streets around the city are really just upgraded cell phone equipment, the police will begin a “Drone Unit” to fight crime– “said to be equipped with night vision technology,” this article says, they “won’t be weaponized,” and the NYPD digi-dog program from Boston Dynamics has been discontinued for right now and drones patrolling streets soon, right? Also on Friday the New York Federal Reserve announced plans for a new Fed digital dollar – a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is all in favor of completely digitized money. Meanwhile, it looks like NYC schools are going to be a lot safer with new initiatives to put biometric screening in them including maybe facial recognition. Nothing to worry about, right?
The city pays tributes to its heroes in different ways, and NYC street art loves Biggie Smalls more than anyone, along with folks like Spike Lee and Jean Michel Basquiat. This week we spotted a few new ones among the bevy of new street art beauties we discovered below.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Jason Naylor, Homesick, Savior El Mundo, King Baby, Mutz, Glare, Banksy Hates Me, Ashley Hodder, Raisa Nosova, Qzar, Spin, INU, Cheatz, Ultraboyz, Humble, Carlos RMK, and Yuzly Mathurin.
G. James Daichendt. Robbie Conal: Streetwise: 35 Years of Politically Charged Guerrilla Art. Schiffer, 2020. Reprinted from the original review. …Read More »
A vast aquatic landscape painted on the pavement becomes a collective artwork and an open-air playground.Artistic direction by Andrea Conte …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
