Beautiful Pollution

In the dying light, everything is beautiful.
Smokestacks spew fiery incandescence
Into the cool dark sky.


There is beauty in the nameless stolidity
of the warehouses, faceless factories
dotting streets forgotten by all
but the tired souls leaving behind
another day's work and the graffiti guerrillas
Arriving for the nightshift.



Waterways weave
Almost naturally through concrete and crud,
Reflecting oily moonlight as they snake their way to the sea.


Do the tower keepers reflect upon such sites from high above the clouds?
Or do all the cracks and scuff marks, street stencils and the dusty drunks,
The stray kittens and their curious curators*, do all of these meld
into a blurry mass stretching out Eastward, haggard,
an industrial wasteland across the moat?

------------------

*Allow me to show you.
wait, hold on a minute...
Ok cool, now it's on right.

Prior to taking the photos from the poem, I was riding my bike and came upon a dead-end at Newton Creek's edge that told me to stop and stay a while. Not because it was anything near hospitable-looking. To be honest, it was a rather unremarkable dead-end overgrown with virile weeds and and discarded pleasantries. The only point of interest was the sea of Ketel One trucks parked pleasantly together in the lot next door.

Yet something else made me dismount the Green Goblin. Upon venturing through the light brush I discovered a legal dumping zone of sorts, a pipe spewing water into the creek. The prominent plaque above it verified its legality.

The warehouse across the creek looked lonely in the late afternoon.

And the Empire State stood boldly, silently silhouetted against a rosy sky.
And then I saw an SUV pull up right behind my unlocked, nubile bicycle. I started walking to the scene, convinced with 100% certainty that I would have to thwart the theft of my second bicycle in a row. The previous ride was snatched from right inside my front door in Allston. In broad daylight. In a house with six other guys. Now I understand my Dad's amazement when he'd return from a night away to find my bathroom door broken, again, clearly by sheer drunken force during what obviously was a high school party the night before... and I'd have no explanation or excuse, I just didn't know.

Anyway, the driver gets out and opens the back door, at which point a pack of skinny cats materialized from nowhere. The guy then pulls out a couple bags of Burger King and walks into the Ketel One parking lot (without a peep from the security guard) and sits down on the curb to unleash the feast upon the scraggly beasts. As the kittens lapped at milk from makeshift containers and ate what I'm pretty sure was actual Burger King fare, I realized my gut had been right about telling me to stop there.

Adventures in Street Art

As soon as I saw this storefront on Greenpoint Avenue in, surprise, Greenpoint, I knew I had to check it out. Whether it was the oldschool boombox, oldschool sneakers, cool t-shirts, or even just the lettering on the window, something drew me off my bike and into the store, called Alpha Beta. I was greeted by a cute, friendly girl (whose name obviously alludes me as that's my style) who willingly answered my questions about the art, clothing, musical equipment in the corner, cans of spray paint locked in metal cages, and the two adorable pit bulls that lapped the sweat from my mesh short-adorned legs. The art consisted of cool posters and some paintings, and the clothing was cool t-shirts designed by prominent street artists (I recognized one such artists' work from pictures of 5 Pointz, the graffiti Mecca of NYC. Yes, I felt pretty cool telling her that!). There were also spray painted hats, out-of-production old sneakers, and more old school boomboxes also adorning the walls. When I asked about the amplifiers and keyboards, she informed me that there was an indoor/outdoor back section that holds music and art events where bands play and graffiti artists paint. The mural-sized graffiti works hanging in the back start around $12,000...

Yes, that's right, $12,000. While I agree that this price is far too high even for a really cool piece of graffiti art from an influential street artist, I feel it's a good sign that graffiti and other forms of street art have gained more mainstream acceptance as legitimate forms of cultural communication. When I worked my google magic on this store, I found articles written shortly after the store's inception early this summer about a local councilman with a hard-on for squelching graffiti who was making a stink about the store encouraging vandalism. He made a valid point in saying there's not enough legal graffiti for the store to make a profit, so the store would mostly be profiting from crime.

However, street art is a 'crime' that the people have embraced and expanded. Yes, a lot of graffiti is just the simple, illegible 'tagging' with a black marker that no one can make any sense of and can be an eyesore. But more and more, I'm seeing a resurgence of visually appealing, sometimes thought-provoking art that enhances a neighborhood rather than tainting its image. Gone are the days where graffiti in NYC equaled gangs, hoodlums, and assorted low-lifes and hooligans. Now the 'criminals' are young artists who post pictures of their street art on their Flickr account for the world to see. Hell, the Tate Modern commissioned graffiti artists to paint the outside of the building. Lets not let uptight, unaware politicians stop NYC from being a premier destination for the best street artists in the world to do their work.

Here are some photos of graffiti and/or outdoor art that caught my eye after I left Alpha Beta and rode around Williamsburg.

secret project robot

See the FKDL at the bottom of the monster man piece? Here's more of FKDL's work.

Live With Animals art gallery

Check out more of these sweet robots.

Yeah, I'm kind of a sucker for cute dogs, even painted ones.

We truly are.