Welcome to Part I of II of our photo collection from the 14th Annual Bushwick Collective Block Party. This year’s edition, held on May 31, 2025, brought together a powerful fusion of beats, paint, and community spirit—just the kind of vibrant energy we at BSA love to celebrate.
The day’s star performer, hip-hop legend Rakim, set the stage alight with an electrifying set that fused old-school authenticity with Bushwick’s forward-thinking street culture – an intelligent merging of underground and old-school. Sharing the spotlight were dynamic artists Statik Selektah, Gorilla Nems, Termanology, and Evil Dee, among others.
On the mural front, the Block Party again transformed Troutman Street into a living gallery. This year’s visiting muralists included Sef1, Contrabandre, Huetek, Gigstar & Minus One, Tymon de Laat, Ashley Hodder, and Enzo a psychotropic summer stew that again sampled from acrss the graffiti and street art spectrum.
It was a weekend where paint met poetry, beats met brushstrokes, and each corner of Bushwick told a fresh story. We hope these images capture the creative dialogue that unfolded. Stay tuned for Part II, where we continue to explore more of this year’s murals and moments.
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 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays Everyone!
Street Art has been adopted as a lifestyle by some celebrity art collectors in recent years, adding to their personal brand and elevating the artist’s legacy in some ways. Brooklyn Museum exhibited 100 celebrated works from the personal art collection of musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz and their wife Alicia Keys, often including prominent, recognized names like Jean Michel Basquiat. Here SEF.01 channels the aesthetic and re-presents Keys as a girl, surrounded by references to childhood and the Brooklyn Street Artist in his mural.
Summer in the city with the hot asphalt, the humming of air conditioners, the tantalizing tune of the ice cream truck, the delightful shrieks of children in the playground, the BBQ smells on the sidewalks, the breeze coming from the ocean, the cacophony of songbirds, and the desires that long days bring.
Who can conjure a more intoxicating feeling than the feeling of summer? We let ourselves feel free from layers of woolen clothes and stiff limbs. When only a pair of shorts and a tattered T-shirt will do, we lay down and look at the sky, the grass soft beneath us. We hold court on rooftops, fire escape stairs, and front stoops. We celebrate the outdoors and soak in the summer rain. We are all children again, refusing to come back inside.
Joe Ficalora’s Annual Bushwick Collective Block Party is one of our official summer parties in New York City. This block party is unique, with a perfectly balanced combination of art, music, performance, and food trucks. This year’s edition was no different. International, national, and local artists came prepared to get up and get it done. Graffiti writers and street artists took over blocks and walls, bringing a vibrant palette of color, forms, ideas, icons, idols, themes, thoughts, and games with them. The public who came to see them painting live spent a full day enjoying art being made and dancing to the energy of hip-hop performers. We invite you to enjoy Part 1 of the offerings on the street, with Part 2 coming soon.
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 2023. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. 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. Happy Holidays Everyone!
It is reported that as a child of 6, Brooklyn’s Basquiat became a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum, thanks to his mom Matilde. Helping him discover and explore artists work and his own creativity was foundational to his later development in studio and as a street artist, along with partner Al Diaz as part of SAMO@. This year Jean Micheal’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Basquiat expanded and more fully recounted his personal story for many thousands of his fans, art world documentarians, and educators with their touring KingPleasure exhibition.
Seeing this image of Basquiat as a boy reminds us that children’s creativity should be encouraged and nurtured, no matter what field they pursue. For artist SEF 1, who painted this mural, it was his connection to the graffiti and street art story that compelled him to do this portrait on the street. “It seemed to me that I owed him this last tribute in which I present him as a child, with the innocence of kid who dreams of being someday a great artist making drawings in his notebooks, creating the basis of his adult artistic practice.”
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
