on street art in NYC

I am yesterday come direct from New York City (NYC), that fair, Mid-Atlantic island-metropolis. Being a purveyor of street art, and a person who collects images of these most fleeting slivers of mankind's dazzlingly bountiful imagination, posting them occasionally at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com, it is my rote to explore a city's avoided and trash-strewn places, taking pictures of any graffiti I find living there. Having collected street art in Berlin, Los Angeles, Amsteram, Philadelphia, Long Beach, San Diego, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Tampa, Boston, and, most recently, in New York, I have amassed an internal sense-knowledge-base of the many different and various trends, techniques, and habits that graffiti writers tend to exhibit; ergo, I believe I can gain a rapid understanding of a city's predominant trends-in-vandalism from seeing but a small portion of the overall milieu.

Perhaps I was in the wrong areas (Hunter's Point, Long Island City, and Manhattan), or perhaps I was on the wrong streets (primarily down Broadway from 42nd to Battery Park, and near the World Trade Center), but most images (except for those examples that will be uploaded to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com in about three months, due to backlog) that I managed to capture were obtained from only a handful of areas around town, including near Canal Street, on the Lower East Side, and in the East and West Villages; the rest of Manhattan was either swept clean of its no-charge-to-the-consumer open-air-art-galleries or the police forces of certain areas are so adept at patrolling and desecrating the works of art that street artists labor to apply there that these clever vandals know well enough to stay away.

Compared, moreover, to the cities mentioned above, Manhattan's street artists seem to prefer primarily self-adhesive name badges sold by one of the major office-supply chain stores, upon which they write – in nearly illegible, seemingly gang-or-crew-specific script – their own names, identifying numbers, or the name of the group or home area. (Such stickers were seen primarily in parts of NYC with little to no other graffiti, as opposed to graffiti-rich areas, which exhibited such profusion of street art that the aforementioned stickers became all but invisible against the colorful and riotous backdrop of other works). Whereas in, say, Los Angeles, one finds curious and strange examples of graffiti adorning otherwise-blank surfaces in nearly every part of the city, whether in the financial district, in the heart of Hollywood, or in the sleepier parts of Koreatown, graffiti in New York tends to be applied to almost any available surface – adorned or blank, private or public – that happens to be in arm's reach of the sidewalk. Whereas in most other cities graffiti-writers generally apply their works of art to the backs of street-signs, to public utility-boxes, or to hatches and those metal doors that cover access panels – mostly avoiding stuccoed or painted surfaces – in NYC, vandals appear to not give a fuck about what they spray over with their pressurized paints, which pisses off the city's property owners.

Persons looking for high-quality street art in New York City will do well to avoid the shiny and the well-swept areas, preferring rather the grimier and less-well-kept areas, which will exhibit such bountiful and beautiful examples of graffiti as one might expect from a world-class city such as the Big Apple. Just remember to stoop slow, to revel in the filth, and to keep your head on a swivel, because the NYPD is alert, and it is everywhere.

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on nature's nightly light-show

During these muggy days of summer, when the sun has set and the bats have emerged to hunt, thousands of bioluminescent insects put on a fascinating and free light-show. I do not really see it unless I stand for a while in the bowl of the valley and let my eyes adjust to the darkness; then, however, I realize that nearly every available surface – from the low grasses to the tops of the highest trees – has been taken over by lightning bugs.

Granted, the bugs do not produce the lung-thumping boom of fireworks, their lights are less bright than, say, roman candles, and they generate hardly any unnecessary light or air pollution, but for all of their apparent shortcomings these tiny insects, when occupying a stand of trees in sufficient number, are far more impressive than even the most magnificent and expensive Fourth of July fireworks display. The show they put on is so dazzling, so mesmerizing, that I must often force myself out of my trance-like state and continue on to the small tent by the creek in which I sleep most hot nights. To my knowledge, there is no rhyme or reason to these insects' flashings, no clear-cut code as far as I have been able to see, only thousands of randomly-timed pinpricks of white light winking on and off in the dark and shadowy gloom of the trees in which they sit. Concert-goers in a blacked-out sports stadium will all try to take a picture of the headlining band when it finally mounts the stage; the efforts of these little bugs have a similar visual effect, but to my knowledge their luminescent signaling is a means to the end of getting laid, while a concert-goer's flashings are little more than proof of his foolish exuberance and having forgotten to properly adjust his camera.

So, this week during which we Americans celebrate the date upon which our nation issued the most important document in the history of mankind, don't waste your money on Chinese-made fireworks – wait until it is dark and then go stare at a tree.

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