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.
The streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn right now are one sprawling open-air studio—artists from around the world balanced on cherry pickers, ladders, and step stools, bending brushes, tilting rollers, and waving aerosol cans like conductors directing an urban symphony of color. Thick lines, fine mists, reflections, textures, letterforms in every handstyle—they’re building volume and vibe, layering stories and style one gesture at a time.
Since transforming this once Dutch “town in the woods” into a global destination for graffiti and street art over a decade ago, Joe Ficalora has brought hundreds—more likely thousands—of pieces to these Brooklyn walls. A working-class, heavily industrial neighborhood with a strong immigrant presence for the last century, the new neighbors may not always understand the street culture that this movement grew from – often arriving with a whiff of suburban sensibility, but let’s be honest—they wouldn’t be here if the Bushwick Collective hadn’t turned the place into a magnet.
Graffiti writers know how to thrive in hostile environments. It’s built into the DNA. Street artists, too, have evolved with ingenuity and hustle since this worldwide boom began hitting walls in the ’90s. Ficalora’s no different—he’s stayed the course, taken the hits, and kept the engine running.
As tradition now demands, the Collective kicks off summer with a Brooklyn-style block party this weekend—thousands pouring into the streets to celebrate the visual feast. Our photographer. Jaime Rojo has been out documenting the latest wave of mural-making, capturing the energy before the crowds flood in.
What’s always set this apart is Ficalora’s instinct to unify. He’s given room to both graffiti kings and street art innovators, encouraging them to work side by side—and sometimes shoulder to shoulder. The hard lines between the two have softened over the years anyway; many street artists still tag graffiti as their first love, and plenty of writers have flexed into new directions. Cross-pollination is the norm, not the exception.
Add DJs, food trucks, neighborhood vendors, and this thing becomes more than a party—it’s community. Fourteen years deep, and like Joe says, it’s the journey, not the destination.
Although if you’re into street culture, this weekend in Bushwick is your destination, without doubt.
Following the evolution of The Bushwick Collective and its annual block party in Brooklyn has been a captivating journey akin to an anthropological exploration into the growing embrace of street art and murals within the realms of graffiti and HipHop. Back in the day, as the neighborhood began transforming with the influx of gentrifiers, street art faced outright dismissal or was treated as a rare phenomenon, a curiosity.
Unaware of the previous codes that roughly governed the practices of graffiti writers on the street, art-students-cum-street-art-poets often obtusely stomped their way into public view to circumvent a gallery system and to express their right to self-expression in public; something HipHop culture had been encouraging for years but had perhaps not envisioned this way. The rivalry between graffiti aficionados and street artists/muralists was sometimes palpable, with throwies vandalizing fresh paint, the OGs asserting territorial dominance, and at times, even resorting to threats and insults in person and in online forums.
As the block party, now in its twelfth year, unfolded, its early editions predominantly featured international and some local street artists eagerly seeking out BC’s visionary leader, Joe Ficalora, for an opportunity to leave their mark on his neighborhood walls. Local street art forums found fault with Ficalora, masking a barely hidden contempt for a streetwise guy taking a leadership role and betraying their own classist privileged opinions about the right to curation. That has all melted appreciably; this year’s event evidenced the remarkable shift that has been underway. Graffiti writers took the stage alongside the muralists in prime spots, sometimes seamlessly collaborating to create art transcending boundaries, all while the electrifying sounds of live HipHop performances reverberated through the air and TikTokers danced in front of them.
Let’s raise a bottle to those who always believed in the possibility of this transformative phenomenon, and to those who championed inclusivity over exclusivity. It’s yet another reason why our hearts beat for this extraordinary international art movement, the embodiment of the people’s democratic spirit and the unlimited creative spirit that is in every person. And most importantly, it’s a reminder of why we hold you dear.
The Bushwick Collective Annual Summer Block Party, now on its 12th edition, has established itself as an official opener of the Summer season in New York City. With its combination of art, music, and food, this is at its root a street art initiative founded and provided by local resident and business owner Joe Ficalora. Joe continues to show his steadfast dedication to the community with a significant, free open event for everybody in the family to enjoy.
Artists from around the world and local artists are invited to create vibrant and large-scale murals that encompass all disciplines, including graffiti in a very big way, on the walls of buildings in Bushwick. Making public space safer for the public to enjoy, many streets are closed off, allowing attendees to roam freely and explore the various murals, including many that are being created by the artists as passersby watch. Live music performances by local performers and DJs add to the festive atmosphere, with food trucks, vendors, and art installations – a true community event for people of all backgrounds.
Here are some of the new murals and installations underway. We’ll bring you a recap of the newly finished pieces soon. Enjoy!
Style Wars! A new interpretation of it is blazoned across the Houston Wall thanks to Optimo NYC, who is rather owning it recently. This free-wheeling ever changing magnet for attention in a very gentrified Manhattan cheers the fans of true graffiti almost daily right now, buffeted by the roar of traffic and the occasional rock band playing in front of it.
The many flavors of New York street art and graffiti are everywhere – in community murals speaking about mental health, aerosol tags in doorways, in wheatpasted poems on subway columns, in soldiered sculptures on the sides of parking signs. New Yorkers love to be expressive, and in general, indulge one another’s imperfect ways of doing it. There is usually someone who is crowing about the golden age of New York, and who can deny one person’s perspective. Ever the optimists, we see the changes, the losses, the gains, and the free-wheeling spirit alive on the streets, and we think New York is having a golden age right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: EVOL, Cey Adams, Giani NYC, No Sleep, Mort Art, JDL, Optimo NYC, Chris RWK, SEIMR, RUTHE, Scott McDonald, Sawr, Tymon De Laat, Amill Onair, Sherwin Banfield, and David H. Wagner.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
