Leviticus - Part 10

Another mass promotion from Leviticus. These were taped up all over the Union Square area.

Union Square has become the Times Square for NYC residents. It's got everything that Times Square has, like theaters, big box retailers, street performers, crowds and a major subway hub, but without the tourists. Add a park and some political unrest and voila!

W is not healthy for children and other living things.

More from those who think that everything that President Bush says, thinks and does is evil, stupid and unhygienic. It's America's inability to separate personalities from policy that got W elected in the first place - voters preferred Bush over Gore and Kerry because Bush was the guy that they felt that they could sit down with and have a beer.

Homeboy Sandman

Homeboy Sandman, an enterprising rapper, took over the advertising space of a subway car, slipping his own series of flyers under the plastic that holds paid ads.

All of the ads speculate that famous rappers like Jay-Z and 50 Cent would be fans if they had heard his music and, in the case of Big Pun, were still alive.

Prosecute Karl Rove

This takes bumper sticker politics one step smaller. I found this four-and-a-quarter-inch demand on a subway exit in Long Island City.

Twenty % Tippers - Part 4

The Twenty%Tippers sent me another one of their stories in the mail. It's eight pages long, too long to tape up in a subway station or for me to transcribe here.

The title is "Man in a Diaper" and the premise is that the city of New York decides to provoke Islamic militants by seating a man in a diaper - one of the Twenty%Tippers is selected for the job - atop the Freedom Tower spire. The plan is based on a misinterpretation of an obscure passage in the Koran .

The Tipper's website has a collection of their previous stories and perhaps this one will be posted soon, or at least in time for the 7th anniversary of 9-11.

This is another leg in their campaign to give away their free CD. The Tippers are ahead of the major labels who still haven't gotten it through their heads that recorded music has become a free commodity. They might as well give songs away with six-packs of Coke, like when I was a kid and they would sometimes put a Bobby Sherman record on the back of a cereal box.

Lots of Money

Any offer that skips what the job is and goes straight to the piles and piles of cash you can earn is always suspect. Especially when the people who have figured out how to make these vast sums can't even afford a computer and printer. Still, all of the tear off tags were gone when I found this.

Found in front of the C-Town supermarket in Long Island City.

RAB1501

The mystery of who wheatpasted the illustration of the Dakota in Washington Square Park is solved. While on 5th Avenue on the Upper East Side, I found a few more images from the same artist. This one includes the artist's handle, RAB1501.

He has a Myspace page where you can read all about his work. In one of the pictures on his page I noticed that he had a show with our usual suspect Leviticus and I think I recognized the Freestyle family logo too.

To my eye his drawings look like spot illustrations, the kind you find in the Black Book.

9-11 Roundup

Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of 9-11, an event that people still feel strongly about. Here's some of the messages that have been posted around NYC.
I remember the days of "united we stand." That was before the country was divided over the Iraq war. Even the World Trade Center is still a hole in the ground because no one can agree on what to build there.

By the time I found this on a sidewalk in Long Island City, the poster looked like it had taken more of a stamping than terrorism.
For some, 9-11 marks a new era a fascism in this country brought about by the Bush administration when the threat of terrorism is merely a tool to frighten the populace into submission. You can find more stickers and posters ready for printing at www.strike911.org.
And then there are the conspiracy theorists who I wrote about earlier. The activists at NY 9/11 Truth are trying to create an NYC 9/11 ballot initiative enabling residents of NYC to vote for a new, independent investigation of 9/11. I get the feeling that even if there were an independent investigation revealing the conspiracy behind 9-11 there would still be people claiming that the independent investigation was a cover up and that there is an even deeper conspiracy behind the attacks, involving the Vatican, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve and Home Depot.

Custom Pen & Ink Drawings of Pets

Found along 5th Avenue, near Union Square.

The thought of going into the pet portrait business occurs to so many artists. Does anyone make any money doing this?

Of all of the pet portraitists I've seen, Keith Romano is one of the better artists. He also does pen and ink portraits of houses.

Labor Day Consists Of One Day Of Work

Eventually most American holidays lose sight of their original intention. Labor Day was created to honor the working man but has been transformed into summer's last hurrah. Writing a poem to point this out is not much of a revelation.

Is it so bad that Labor Day is about "blowout sales" and "up to ten thousand barbeques per square foot"? It shows just how far the working stiff has come if he's taking a day off from the job to buy a flat-screen TV and throw a burger on the grill.

The line "it's abundantly clear that things have gone in the wrong direction: 'Hail to the Chief'" wants to hang some sort of blame on the President but nothing else in the poem makes it at all clear how President Bush has perverted or diminished Labor Day. Like a lot of left wing political expression, it's assumed that everything that goes wrong in the world - paper jams, burnt casseroles, crying babies - can be traced back to the President.

P.S.1 Courtyard

P.S.1 MoMA in Long Island City is one of my favorite places to see art, second only to the Whitney. Here's evidence that their interests and mine are in alignment.

The courtyard in front of the museum is covered with a canopy supported by wooden poles that look very much like the ones that carry telephone lines. Affixed to these poles are flyers that span a few decades.
This flyer, for the early 80s SoCal punk band the Plugz, was a bit of nostalgia for me. I remember seing those guys back in the day.
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The same can be said for this one for Black Flag.

The contemporary Oneida get the nod from the art world as well. They played P.S.1 on Saturday, September 1st.

Not all of the flyers were for bands and they all seem to have been picked for their hip factor and graphic design.

I should think about how to organize my flyers into an installation so when I get the phone call from a gallery or institution I'll be ready.

Boxer

Sticker found on a lamp post near P.S. 1 in Long Island City. The museum is in the same neighborhood as a lot of artist's studios and is a magnet for this sort of thing.

The Bush Regime Engineered 9-11

Who killed our 3000 brothers and sisters on September 11?

Was the Titanic an inside job?

What is the connection between the Vatican, the Roosevelt administration and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?

Who really shot President McKinley and why did they name a mountain after him?

Leviticus - Part 9

Another from the crayon series found near Union Square.

I've also been noticing post-it notes with the Freestyle Family double F taped up around downtown.

Dakota

Found in Washington Square Park wheat pasted to a lamp post. The image is an architecural detail of the famous apartment building.

Nice, right?

Posted in the Bleecker Street area by If You Don't Know, a website whose stated purpose is " to take control of our public space by promoting racial, social and economic consciousness; to take back our public space and combat the infiltration of commercial propaganda with messages that will liberate the minds of the members of our communities and reshape the value system distorted by commercialization and materialism, helping to redirect our priorities toward things which will promote a more prosperous and long lasting form of economic development of our community, such as education and self empowerment."

It's time for Advertising 101. This flyer uses what is called borrowed interest - that is putting something sensational and irrelevant in an ad to rope in a reader. This example uses sex. You can tell that a woman's bust has nothing to do with at-risk young men by putting any other message after the lead in:

Nice, right? You know what else would be nice?

$99 round trip fares to Rome.
The New York Times delivered free for one week.
Anal Holocaust live in Stockton.

The worst part is that this is a PSA, a category which ad creatives love because it gives them a good chance to scoop up awards. If You Don't Know wants to combat ad industry messages with their own but first they have to learn how to create print that is just as compelling.

Squatter Films

I think of squatters as part of gentrification. They're a subset of the artsy types who transform a bad neighborhood into prime real estate. Squatters see it differently judging from the hyperbolic "gentrification is genocide" claim on this flyer.

It also states "Squatting is about taking back life, taking back the land in the interest of justice, equality, peace and love between neighbors..." I disagree. Squatting is about economics, wanting to live in NYC and not wanting to pay a high rent.

SPC. Brandon Jacob Rowe

Posters found in the West Village, recording the date of death and age of a U.S. soldier, presumably a casualty of the Iraq War. Uncle Sam could either be repeating his "I want you" message or singling out the viewer as responsible for Rowe's death.

Reward $1000 Cash

This is the second lost dog flyer I've found in my neighborhood in a week. I suspect that there's a dognapper loose. All the more reason to boycott Saigon Grill.

What Money Can Buy

Found in the subway. This is the sermon, preserving the emphasis:

WHAT MONEY CAN BUY
Money Will Buy
A bed BUT NOT sleep.
Books BUT NOT brains.
Food BUT NOT appetite.
Finery BUT NOT beauty.
A House BUT NOT a home.
Medicine BUT NOT health.
Luxuries BUT NOT culture.
Amusement BUT NOT happiness.
A crucifix BUT NOT a Savior.
A church pew BUT NOT heaven.

The rest is an appeal to let Jesus be your savior.

Seeing how many churches in NYC are being converted into luxury condos, it looks like Jesus is literally losing ground to dead presidents.

On 12th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues. You can see already how the remains of the church will be completely overwhelmed by the building behind it.

The Christian Scientists will remain on the bottom floor but the upper floors will be residences.

On West 4th Street between 6th Avenue and Washington Square Park. God just can't afford to live in this neighborhood anymore.