Jay-z x Barclay's Brooklyn

Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey spent several weeks in New York in July 2011 and February 2012, creating and printing the works for his forthcoming exhibition at Pace Prints. In this video, he discusses the ideas behind the works and the printmaking processes that he used. All the works were created at the Pace Paper studio and Watanabe Press in Brooklyn.

Inspiration

The Neighborhoods Issue

I would like to quickly applaud New York Magazine for it's amazing "Neighborhoods Issue" - an issue described as "Fifty ’hoods from across the five boroughs ranked, considering factors from housing stock to nightlife, by the statistical analyst Nate Silver; the mutual contempt between Williamsburg’s two primary populations; the quest to define, create, and sell a new neighborhood in the middle of Manhattan; and much, much more." This one was particularly interesting - 50 New York neighborhoods are ranked (Park Slope is in first place) and given short captions explaining and analyzing said ranks, alongside snapshots of the locales. My favorite spread in the issue, however, is the "Locals (A neighborhood is nothing without its characters)" by Bennett Marcus (images shown in this post) - each one is unique and eccentric in his or her own way, not to mention photographed beautifully by Andreas Laszlo Konrath. Love!

Song of the day: Shiny Toy Guns - Major Tom (Coming Home)

Buffalo Exchange

My sister found out about this magical cave of wonders and told me (and our massive amount of unused clothes) about it. We decided to give it a go. Basically, Buffalo Exchange is a thrift store that buys clothes too - so we packed up all of the clothes in our closets that either didn't fit or weren't worn anymore and drove down to Brooklyn to test our luck in the selling game. There was a little bit of a line (other hopeful vendors) and this nice woman went through all of our stuff, taking some and putting back others (and she did the "putting back" part very nicely might I add - there was no judgement of any kind, just "well, what we're looking for is stuff that pertains to current trends or really great basics or cool vintage" as she placed back an old H&M jacket into our suitcase). This is how it works: she would buy something, say a pair of jeans, and price it at $10 (the price at which people would buy it in the store) and tell us that we could either take 30% ($3, for the mathematically challenged) in cash home with us or we could have %50 ($5) to use in the store. We ended up taking the cash because the store was closing, but there was some amazing stuff in there! Tsubi jeans, Diesel, Rag & Bone, some amazing vintage shoes, more Nike Air's than I can count! Can't wait to go back when I have more time (and more clothes to recycle!). Highly recommended.

Song of the day: Bermuda - Kisses

You decide...

Street art by Paul ... Richard? 2008. I can't seem to decipher the black glue on the Brooklyn pavement. I'm going to go with slightly heavier versions of Cary Grant and Dali (or an obese John Waters), what about you? The liquid tar drizzles are really nicely done - reminiscent of these drawings my art teacher used to make us do where you weren't allowed to take your pencil off the paper. I definitely hope to see some more.

no. way.

After a relatively gruesome midnight bus ride back home from Montreal - aren't they always? - I had about 3 hours to get to an internship interview in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It took about 2 hours to eat and get to my dad's office to change and look somewhat clean/not like I'd been playing sleep-contortion-opoly for the last 9 hours. Now, there are two bits of exciting news, the first being that I got the internship. The second is that THE STREETBOTS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD! I saw one on Grand Street in Williamsburg and was shocked to say the least - I wonder if they travel in packs! I guess I'll have to keep an eye open for the crazy critters...

UPDATE: Apparently these actually ARE all over the world! A friend who is traveling around North America told me he saw some in Toronto and Chicago as well!