So many other blogs and outlets have already addressed it (including a nice, detailed piece in the Times), but I'd like to also weigh in on the end of photographer Bob Arihood's Neither More Nor Less. As Colin Moynihan said in the afore-cited Times piece, there are certainly more than enough bloggers squawking about all things East Village (myself among them), but exceptionally few of them could ever hold a candle to the gritty, front-line depiction of life on those streets as Arihood. It's one thing to bitch & moan about the shuttering of age-old dive bars, dusty record shops and other indicators of the neighborhood's oft-rhapsodized dying character, but Arihood's reporting dealt primarily in genuine, unflinching human stories. Moreover, Arihood treated his subjects with an empathy and dignity they're sadly not likely to find elsewhere. I understand his reasons for discontinuing the weblog, but that doesn't make me any less sorry to see it end. The picture atop this post is a typical one of Bob's. I strongly recommend checking out his work. Here's hoping it stays online.
Once again, the street outside my office is setting up for some insane form of media/celebrity clusterfuck in celebration of the premiere of "Sex and The City 2." Given how abysmally the first film was received by critics, I'm a bit stupefied as to why they bothered making a sequel. But, to borrow a fabled line from H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
I went back up to the Museum of the City of New York this morning to check out their Charles Addams retrospective (hilarious and hugely recommended) and their exhaustive exhibition on Mayor John Lindsay ("John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York"). I was but a toddler during the time of Lindsay's tenure, but the show is truly a fascinating glimpse of NYC during a turning point. If you're even a passive New Yorkophile, you really owe it to yourself to go check out this show. It's up through October, so make some time for it.
In any case, one of the highlights of the exhibit for me was the space dedicated to Lindsay's establishment of the "Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting." Here's a quick excerpt from the Museum's page on same.
As late as 1965, New York hardly ever appeared in films. That year, only two features were shot in the city: The Pawnbroker,directed by Sidney Lumet, and A Thousand Clowns, directed by Fred Coe, an adaptation of a Broadway play. But in 1966, the Lindsay administration established a dedicated agency, now called the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. The permitting process was simplified, the Police Department established a unit to assist filmmakers, and from then on, all city agencies and departments were instructed to cooperate with producers and directors. Today, over 200 films are made in New York City each year, generating over $5 billion a year in economic activity and creating more than 100,000 jobs.
Ironically, many of the films made during the Lindsay era portrayed the city's disarray and decline.
Alongside this part, they showed a telling montage of film snippets ranging from "The Producers" and "Barefoot in the Park" through "Serpico" and "The French Connection" (and about a hundred in between). I started going over all of my favorite NYC-centric films (notably "Wait Until Dark," "Bananas," "Rosemary's Baby," etc.) and realized how many of them were shot during Lindsay's era. And, certainly, other perennial favorites like the original "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3," "The Warriors" and "Death Wish" wouldn't have been able to happen without Mayor Lindsay's agency.
I kept ruminating on this point as I was walking back down Fifth Avenue and was suddenly stopped in my tracks by an appropriate signifier. For the past several weeks, my estimable bloggin' comrade EV Grieve has been regularly posting about the annoyance of the seemingly endless production of the -- god help us -- "The Smurfs Movie," and how it's basically taken over the East Village. Well, get ready, Upper East Side, `cos according to a flyer I spotted taped to a light pole on 101st & Fifth Avenue, them Smurfs are moving uptown as well! I guess you can thank Mayor Lindsay for that too.
Anyway, as an very tenuously-related post-ender, I exhumed the below clips from the 1973 film adaptation of the musical, "Godspell." I'm not going to front -- when I a kid, this record was in fairly regular rotation in our household. In time, I grew wary of its overt Jeezy-creeziness, but its depictions of New York City in the early 70's (much like it's cinematic sibling, "Hair") make it truly worthy of a time capsule. Watching them today, it's amazing how so much has changed .... and how so much hasn't. I don't know how happy you'll be about enduring the groovy (read: slightly cloying) 70's show tunes, but perhaps you'll enjoy the sights of Central Park, Lincoln Center and (very fleetingly) the now-closed Empire Diner. Pay special attention to the footage of the final location of the second clip, "All for the Best." They're surreal to say the least, considering events that would unfold on the same real estate almost three decades later.
I honestly don't remember when I first started noticing/paying attention to Shepard Fairey's enigmatic artwork, but it must have been in the early 90's. At the time, I was spending a lot of time in Soho (which hadn't yet been gentrified beyond all semblance of recognition) as an inglorious gallery-sitter. I remember seeing the "Andre the Giant has a Posse" sticker everywhere and not really getting it. That was swiftly followed by the mysterious "OBEY" posters. Again, I wasn't entirely sure what they meant, but I liked the clandestine and slightly ominous aesthetic of it all. I started snapping pics of Fairey's work whenever I saw it (the shot at the top of this post was taken on Mercer Street, I believe, and dates back to the summer of 1997). Gradually, I became a fan, even going so far as to buy a few prints. Most of them live in storage now, but you'll have to talk to my wife about that.
As Fairey's work expanded and word spread, his posters, stickers and stencils took on several different incarnations, and his images became increasingly more message-laden and politicized. At the same time, the merchandising wing of his operation went into full swing. Along with the artwork, you could suddenly buy "Obey Giant" t-shirts and collectibles (and I'll admit to having a few of each). I'll be honest, though. The sudden transparency of that move dealt a severe blow to the mystique of his work for me. Given the diversity of products and their "limited edition" cache, it almost seemed like Fairey's was borrowing a page from Gene Simmons' playbook. But given the causes he supported, the statements he made and the specific cultural figures he celebrated (everyone from Glenn Danzig and Darby Crash through Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky), I was still totally down with what Fairey was doing.
Marketplace-saturation, however, was starting to take hold. For a while, in the same manner as the ridiculous Von Dutch trucker-cap craze, "Obey Giant" gear had become ubiquitous. While its initial message was purposely vague and seemingly open to interpretation, it was becoming just a shallow cliche.
Of course, the now-infamous "HOPE" poster Fairey designed for the Obama campaign transformed him into a very public figure overnight. Almost at once, he became a folk hero, a media darling, a hip iconoclast and a whipping boy. His signature style is now everywhere. His once underground campaign seems now very decidedly above ground. The guerilla artist is now a celebrity.
In recent weeks, Fairey's work has made some flashy appearances and accompanying headlines. His latest show, a collection dubbed "May Day" is also the final installation, I believe, in the Deitch gallery down on Wooster Street in Soho. I'd been meaning to check it out since it opened, but hadn't had the time. With Peggy and the kids down in Texas for a week visiting my in-laws, I finally got over to Wooster Street on Saturday to check it out.
I did strike me as slightly odd that Fairey's graffiti-inspired artwork -- the same stuff which initially adorned the brick-faced facades of the streets of Soho -- was now hanging on a proper Soho gallery wall. In fact, to see Fairey's work, you don't even need to visit the gallery. It's still all over the streets. But that's a dichotomy I'll let the coffee table aesthetes and art historians debate. Regardless, I'm still a huge fan of Fairey's style and subject matter, and found the "May Day" show to be pretty cool. But as respectable as the work has arguably become, it still has its share of detractors. The street art community from whence he came now defiles his work and renounces him as a sellout. On the flip side of that coin, as EV Grieve noted, Fairey's "May Day" show was written up in the Times, and art critic Roberta Smith was, shall we say, less than entirely kind.
As a revelation that should surprise absolutely no one, I was the consummate geek in high school back in the early 80s. I collected comic books, hated sports, read sci-fi novels, played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and zealously listened to Devo. I was basically invisible to the girls, a target for the jocks and arguably one of the least popular kids in the class (that's me on the far right of the picture above, sulking at an otherwise jubilant class retreat). Don't feel bad, though. I invariably brought a lot of it on myself, but have since gone onto become a marginally well-adjusted individual. Moreover, whose high school experience wasn't at least partially shitty? At the very least, though, Hollywood had my back. Maybe no one else understood the daily torment we geeks, nerds and dweebs went through, but thanks to a rich tableaux of cinematic cliché, the abject humiliation of being laughed at, picked on and – in some cases -- abused by jocks, popular kids and bullies was amply represented on the silver screen. Witness this lovingly compiled montage of same by Funny or Die. Enjoy.
There was a great deal of brouhaha this week over what most are calling a prank on Fifth Avenue, in the august shadow of the Flatiron building. In a nutshell, someone painted a line down the sidewalk that divided up the pavement between "Tourists" and "New Yorkers." For anyone who's ever tried to navigate Fifth Avenue during business hours on an even marginally nice day, this will make perfect sense, as the sidewalks are clogged up with herds of ambling, corpulent tourists. Personally speaking, I'd have suggested painting the line further to the north between, say, 57th street and 34th street. It's nuts up there. In any event, many folks got up in arms about it (here's Gawker's take on it). I thought it was pretty funny, but then -- I can't stand tourists (this opinion, according to our mayor, makes me "sick"). In any case, the evidence of the stunt was all but a memory by Thursday afternoon, as the markings had all been tidily scrubbed away.
My friends over at This Isn't Happiness, arguably the finest Tumblr of its kind, exhumed this ancient (well, 1980) ad. As much as this ad reflects a very different flavor than the St. Marks Place of today, amazingly T&V is still there (selling overpriced Dead Boys t-shirts & bondage pants to tourists). God bless'em. Digging a little deeper, it turns out that the ad was first unearthed, of course, by the always-excellent Ephemeral New York. Click here to read her take on it.
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