Live.

I found this bolted to a traffic sign on Spring Street in Soho. Soho used to be an artist's neighborhood. Now it's fancy boutiques.

The East Village used to have more of this sort of thing, but with every new luxury high-rise that goes up we'll see less and less artistic espression at street level.

Wealth lacks imagination, and uses its means to create the monotony of more wealth.

Found:

The saddest of all flyers.

If Shakespeare had written a play called "Lost Kitty", it would surpass all of his other tragedies combined.

"To be, or not to be? That is the question" is like reading a cell phone contract when compared to "I'm a lost kitty! Which way is home?"

Open Source Resistance

When I saw this flyer I was intrigued by its obscurity. A Google search led to Open Source Resistance.net. The stated purpose of the site is "...an attempt to start a grass-roots information militia, so ordinary people can fight to prevent a world where civil rights AND natural resources are both being strip-mined for the convenience of multinational corporations and People Who Know They Are Right."

I was reminded of Insta-Protest whose flyers I wrote about in March. Only the O.S.R. site is way slicker.

If you have a poster, movie, bumper sticker or any other piece of protest art, you can send it to the O.S.R. and, if it passes the one-man selection committee, it will appear on the site. The one man doesn't say who he is.

I looked at the art that made the cut and it is far more sophisticated than the Insta-Protest signs. This is protest by professionals.

Looking further I checked out a movie of an O.S.R. meeting that was raided by the cops. It starts with a militant looking guy addressing a crowd of hipsters, telling them to "wake up and give a shit" about what's going on politically.

It was during this segment that I noticed the quality of the video, multiple camera angles, seamless editing and clear sound. This was no amateur production. I grew suspicious of this "grass-roots" movement and I hoped that it wasn't going to end up being a sneaker commercial.

Turns out it's part of the guerrilla marketing campaign for the new Nine Inch Nails album. After the short speech, the kids are rewarded with a concert by Trent Reznor and his band. The show is supposedly raided by the cops, but it looks staged.

This whole thing feels like the skillful manipulation of a target demographic by a major corporation. (Nine Inch Nails is part of Universal Music Group.) It leaves me feeling a bit more cynical, and these days cynicism is the ally of the groups that Reznor and his Open Source Resistance purport to oppose.

War Is Not The Answer

General Wes Clark is the face of stopIranWar.com, a grassroots organization trying to head off a war against Iran. Where those who protested the Iraq War failed, this movement will succeed.

President Bush can't drum up enough political support for an invasion for Iran, even with the threat of Islam with the bomb. The country trusted him once on a mission to eradicate weapons of mass destruction and won't get fooled again.

Secondly, our all-volunteer military is stretched too thin to invade and occupy yet another country. Entering Iran would require reinstating the draft which is politically impossible.

To ignore both of those points, Bush would be setting himself up for some serious Shakespearean folly.

All Out for Mumia

Mumia Abu-Jamal's is a case that has become a cause. I've seen this guy's face on flyers for as long as I've lived in New York.

The state of Pennsylvania says that Mumia (born Wesley Cook) killed a Philadelphia cop. The far left believes that he is a political prisoner of the global police state.

Mumia's death sentence was overturned so it looks like this battle will continue for the rest of his life.

Urban Decay - Part 1

There's something about urban decay that I find aesthetically pleasing, particularly the effects of nature on urban objects. The city, like any living thing, needs to continually regenerate or the elements will erase it as quickly as a dead pigeon.

From what I can make out from the obliterated type, this was a flyer for a French tutor.

Buy Fair Trade Coffee

While walking up 6th Avenue near West 4th Street, I passed through a swarm of elementary school aged kids handing out this flyer promoting fair trade coffee. The flyer is clearly designed by kids and they looked like a class group. I wondered if their teacher had put them up to this.


It reminded me me of when I was about to graduate from elementary school and all of the 6th grade classes were to perform at a culmination ceremony. This was the early 70s and our teacher had us singing hippy anthems like "Blowing in the Wind" and "If I Had a Hammer".

I knew that there was something wrong with this attempt to indoctrinate me with a left-wing political agenda. I was a punk rock kid before I even knew what punk rock was. My family left for our summer vacation before the ceremony happened so I didn't have to participate.

Leviticus - Part 3

Another Leviticus original, this time found in the West Village. The poem reads,

The only thing we have time for here is power
penetrating ebbs and flows
rushing
Volcanic power determins (sic) destinies dreams...

I always thought that Leviticus was the name of the guy that wrote the book of the Old Testament, but in fact it comes from the Old Latin title, "Liber Leviticus" (Book of Leviticus). This is an adjective suggesting the complete title "the Levitical book" or the "book pertaining to the Levites".

Boycot Saigon Grill

The move to boycot the Saigon Grill has been going on for several weeks and I can hear the chanting of the protesters all the way from my apartment. This Saturday they were especially loud so I went around the corner to investigate.

The New York Times ran an article about the boycot on April 15th. That and the beautiful spring weather brought out a gaggle of casual protesters, mostly college students. Also in attendance were a video crew and some of New York's Finest.


This is the flyer that the protesters have been handing out. The deliverymen claim that they are being paid below minimum wage and are otherwise mistreated by the restaurant. I'll believe every one of their claims and for that reason I have joined the boycot of Saigon Grill. Also, the first time I ate there I got diarrhea.

Iraq Out Now

This was wired to a sign post in Washington Square Park. The "Iraq Out Now" statement sent me on an Internet search for catchy anti-war slogans. I found these gems:

These colors don't run the world.
How did our oil get under their sand?
Who Would Jesus Bomb?
Don't blame me, I voted with the majority.
How many Lives per Gallon?

And my favorite:

Start Drafting SUV Drivers Now.

Leviticus - Part 2

I found this taped to a bus shelter in midtown, the xeroxed flyer placed in a photo album page. The text reads,

"Eating eachother and ourselves to live in this Hell hole smiling and talking and stealing

To the world of dancing Monsters In the Business of Death

Standing on piles of corpses shouting I was Survivor King I was loved I"

This posting has the email address leviticusart@gmail.com so Leviticus thinks of himself as an artist and he(?) owns a computer.