Keep the City beautiful.

That's a place called 5Pointz, right across Jackson Avenue from where I live (it's also right across from MoMA's PS1 courtyard summer party and occasional art exhibit space). The guy who runs it, Meres One, is a cool customer. Sometimes he and a posse of old guard taggers will be at the diner on the corner, reminiscing about the days when their tags were on private property and represented their sets and not just their muses. A lot of foot chases and group beatings, train surfing, and barbed wire fence mishaps. All with a laugh. A friend shot a stop-motion video of a tag in progress, I think the film ended up in a music video of some sort; it was pretty cool to see.

It used to be that you could get up to the roof 24/7, and there were often taggers up there working, plus you could BYOB and watch the sunset over the city, but the landlord tightened up the roof rules a few years ago, nixing a nice hangout. Last year, I think it was in May, one of the external staircases collapsed and someone was injured, but people still put up new art all the time. I should go over with my camera and see what's fresh.

A few businesses in the neighborhood get guys who do their art at 5Pointz to come do a big number on their garage doors; not only is it beautiful, but it keeps punk-ass kids from tagging the place up with their artless bullshit. It may hold down some of the gang tagging too, though it's obvious from the wall outside the American Hero deli that I live in Pitufos territory. Fuckin' Smurfs.

The sad thing is that the landlord wants to turn it into a luxury residential building/mall.

It's always neat to see people who take the 7 train regularly to look out their window and realize what is actually outside. And I think the image of Biggie tends to get most of the call outs.