Rollin, Rollin, Rollin...

Several months ago, I stumbled across an online map that had been created by a popular energy drink concern that I'd rather not name. The map detailed in fairly impressive fashion, the locations of the most popular street art in New York City.

It rubbed me the wrong way for the same reason that apps that do the same thing do. When I first started seeking out graffiti, it didn't take me long to figure out on my own where to find the best stuff. Basically, my method was to go to industrial areas and just wander. And although I probably spent more time in the company of grime, filth and noise than I needed to, the thrill of the find always made it worth the shlep.

Not only does a map take away any sense of surprise, it also lays bare the one real downside of building-based murals: Lack of movement. Many of the the earliest graffiti masterpieces (I make no distinction between graffiti and street art) unmappable in the traditional sense, because they never actually stood still. They were on train cars, which meant you might be able to clue someone in to the existence of one by telling them what line it was running on, but that's it.

As we all know, the days of art-covered trains in NYC are long past. You might find a train that's been defaced by one of those dreadful car ads, but that's about it. Fortunately, we seem to be living in a renaissance of a different sort of movable art:


I think what I like best about the box truck (and occasional moving van) phenomenon is it brings the art to me. I rarely find myself able to get out to Bushwick, Williamsburg or the Bronx, but I do work near Columbus Circle and Ninth Ave, where I saw this truck from Cernesto.

I also get down to Gowanus fairly regularly, where our local scrap metal recycling concern was host to not one but two trucks last month.


Beyond the occasional tag, you'll never find any decent graffiti on 57th Street, aka land of the billionaire's lairs. But keep your eye open on the traffic...


Some times I need only walk out the door onto Smith Street to catch a glimpse of something awesome.



Now, graffiti is that unlike most art forms, in that its public nature dictates that the best of the best gets mixed in with crap, as there are no barriers to keeping out the latter. This is true of trucks too:


Um, ok....

Eh....

Did we not finish this one? Note the reference to Instagram....
But when they're done right, trucks with murals are like the perfect amalgamation of motion, pizzazz, and whimsy. This van, which was done by the Smart Crew, was parked in the shadow of the Navy Yard.


'Merica!
Grasshopper, from Urban Animal, on Queens Boulevard. Spotted this truck on Fordham Road.

I could go on and on here, but you get the general idea. Although the New York City's robust building mural scene is confined to a handful of neighborhoods, mostly in the outer boroughs, thanks to the equally bustling truck scene, graf is well-served to both well-heeled and down and out New York City hoods. Like food trucks, but with vittles for the creative soul..


Fruit truck, Bed-Sty

Happy New Year!

Hey, how it's going? Is lucky 13 treating you well? Does it feel like it was just days ago that you were furiously, frantically, desperately trying to piece together out the final shards of an unwieldy opus, all while simultaneously working full time, shopping for the perfect presents for your family and trying to be what passes for social? No? Oh, that must be just be me.

And how about the guns? I can't be the only one who was so enraged by the mass shooting in Newtown as to be driven to distraction, unable to focus on much else. Am I right? I mean, who gives a shit about graffiti when people are DYING?!?

Ah, who am I kidding? I still care. I have to. It still brightens my day to see this sort of thing on the random street, as I did this afternoon on Amsterdam and 58th Street. And this is a blog about graffiti and street art, not the plagues guns. There will be plenty of time to get into that shit show. Must. Stay. Focused... 

I  saw this truck on 57th Street, near my office, waiting for a light, and although it drove off before I could get close enough to get a picture, I found it parked a few minutes later. Call it a small triumph for unpredictability.

So the thesis is done. Not DONE, of course, as that will happen at the end of spring, when I submit it to the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, for official approval. But the first complete draft of "New York City Graffiti Murals: Signs of Hope, Marks of Distinction," as I've called it, is in the can, at a whopping 20 chapters, two appendices, 150 pages, 39,184 words and 65 images. It is..well, it's a lot. As I tweeted back on December 19th, the last day of the semester, "That's right bitches, I wrote a book."

After three or so years, I definitely felt triumphant as I watched three copies of the thesis spurt from the copier at Kinko's—one for my adviser, one for my second reader, and one for myself. But holy hell, was it a relief too. For starters, Word turned out to be a much worse program to embed images into than I ever imagined, and since I under-estimated how long it would take to curate all the images I wanted to use, that last week was excruciating.

How screwed up is this document? Well, when I open it at work, Word freaks out and starts adding pages, by the THOUSANDS. Every time I tried to open it, it would get caught in this loop of adding pages, and if I let it go, it would reach 10,000 before I force quit the program. Thank god it's just fine on my home laptop.

But it's all worth it. When my adviser weighed in on it on January 3, she had this to say:

"Congrats and bravo on producing a terrific thesis. It represents a tremendous outreach effort and really brings together an enormous number of case studies and important materials. It really turned out wonderfully"

WOO HOO!

So we're entering in the final lap now. I still haven't heard from my second reader yet, but one thing I do need to do is (surprise, surprise) introduce more theory into the text. A running theme for this entire project could easily be summed up simply as MORE THEORY.

For instance, there this is, from Halsey and Young:

The writer who repeatedly tags a wall that is consistently painted ‘clean’ by the authorities knows that there is a better than even chance that a roller brush will eventually be used to bring the wall up to pristine condition. The same writer knows that he has helped turn a porous surface into a non-porous canvas. The latter is one this body can connect with in a more visually affective way.

And then this, from Kramer:

The presence or absence of graffiti determines the social, cultural and economic composition of the city. If the city allows graffiti, then surely “urban decay” will surely follow. If the city does not allow graffiti, then a condition of “urban vitality” will follow. That is, when the city fights graffiti, businesses will come to the city and tourism will boom. This will, in turn, create jobs and increase the tax base. All the residents of the city will benefit from such arrangements.

Both of these are quotes that I cite in chapter five, which highlights the interdisciplinary aspects of my research. I know that in my case studies, these strains of thought come through in my descriptions of how the graffiti murals came to be. But years of toiling in a newspaper newsroom trained me to say as much as possible in as few words as possible, which in this case is the opposite of what is required for  I need to be more explicit and weave references to these folks directly into the text. Oh, and make my conclusion a good three or four pages longer.

So I've got my work cut out for me, especially since I really want to ultimately want to turn this into an online project, and maybe even get it published somewhere in print form. It'd be nice to see this in a form more becoming than 8.5x11 pages with binder clips, you know?

In the mean time, there will be visits to places like Five Points Bushwick:

Greenpoint:
 

And good old Gowanus:

Cheers!
PV