Nah Right

As promised here are the pics from the Ecko Getting Up Block Party that went down yesterday on 22nd street in Manahattan. I got there kinda late, around 6:00, and everybody was mostly done with their pieces but it was still popping. I don’t think I ever saw so many writers in one place at one time, man it was crazy. Graf was getting all types of love from the kids and adults as well. I mean there were grown ass white chicks walking around getting Blackbooks signed and shit! Soome of the writers in attendance were COPE2, CES, WANE, WEN, TKID, IZ the WIZ, DASH and MIN. Judging by the tags on the COPE car, they’re were alot of other kings there who weren’t piecing. If you look close you’ll see tags from JEW, MED, IVORY, and even whiteboy CAP! If you know anything about Style Wars, you know who CAP is and how crazy it was for him to be there.

There was all sorts of dickriding going on so it was hard to really talk to them but they were being cool as fuck and vibing with all the fans.  I mean these are dudes that I’ve seen in videos and magazines for years and, are pretty much repsonible for graf being what it is today. They had barricades like 5 feet behind the trains so the writers had space to work, but the crowds were all pushed up against them and it was tough to really get good flicks cuz of the amount of people. I ran into FENS and INSANE repping YO, shout out to them and FSV. These pics are mad big ‘cuz they’re really high resolution, so if your on dial up, good luck.

Click here for the pics.

Click here to download them all in a rar file

After a whole lot of back and forth between Ecko clothing founder Marc Ecko, City Hall, and fuckface city councilman Peter Vallone, The Getting Up Block Party is gonna happen tomorrow at 12 noon. The Block party is a promotion for Ecko’s new video game, Getting Up - Contents Under Pressure, in which players basically get to bomb trains and walls in a fictional city while uncovering corrupt politicians and city leaders.  Did I mention you get to write Grafitti? Man, I woulda never left my house if this game would have came out like 10 years ago. So basically they planned this big block party on 22nd street which will feature live DJ’s spinning and some of New York’s most legendary writers doing pieces on replicas of NYC trains. Not surprisingly Bloomberg and Vallone had a fit and tried to shutdown the whole party, here are some of their statements:

Vallone: "Holding graffiti demonstrations is like having a demonstration of a thug pickpocketing a wallet or stealing a purse"

Bloomberg: "This is not really art or expression, this is, let’s be honest about what it is: It’s trying to encourage people to do something that’s not in anybody’s interest"
 

A couple of days later the party permit was revoked by the city and it looked like it was a wrap for the event. Then Marc Ecko stood up and did what many say can’t be done: fight City Hall. Ecko filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg and today a federal judge upheld the permit stating:

"By the same token, presumably, a street performance of ‘Hamlet’ would be tantamount to encouraging revenge murder"

That’s what I’m saying, a pro-graf judge! He even went on to declare the city’s actions as unconstitutional and a threat to the First Amendement.  What’s better than a bunch of graf writers beating the system and getting backed up by a fucking judge! On another note, world famous grafitti writer Cope2 was reportedly jailed on harrasement charges after calling Vallone’s voice mail and cursing him out.  I love it.

So I plan on swing by this little shindig tomorrow with a camera and getting some flix, and if I do, you’ll see ‘em here.

I don’t want anybody to think I’m late on this, cuz I knew about it way back in the beginning of June when Cope started it, but I was waiting for him to finish before I posted it here. In case you didn’t know, Time Magazine hired NY graf legend Cope(2) to bomb a billboard at the corner of Wooster and Houston streets downtown over a period of four weeks. What’s going on here is Time is trying to look cool and ‘down’ by using graf in it’s advertisements even though as SOHH reported today, they weren’t as graf friendly back in the 60’s when it started to really pop off.

So anyway Cope and a few of his boys from K.D., and some other graf vets like JA, SKUF, and TKID bombed the billboard with throw ups and tags, pretty much how they would do on any other wall in the city. Then this fuck face City Councilman, Peter Vallone had this to say about the project:

"Time magazine should have spent its money rewarding legitimate artists, not some punk who’s been defacing our city"

 

But what fuck face doesn’t understand is that Cope is a real artist and that the shit he does is just as good as, if not better than, most of the shit hanging in dusty ass fucking museums all over the city where nobody can see it. And what does he think people of my generation and kids today would rather look at, a wall full of dope graf, or some shitty painting from 400 years ago by some European dudes we’ve never heard of?

The good news is, graf writers don’t usually take this kinda shit laying down, and Bucky Turco who publishes Animal magazine is encouraging writers to call Vallone’s office and demand an apology. Well a bunch of writers did call his office, but not just asking for an apology, they’re also threatening to start writing Vallone’s name all over the city if they don’t get one. As much as I’d like to go out and participate, I’m pretty much retired from the graf scene (for now)so I’ll let  this post be my contribution.

Fuck you Vallone, your the fucking punk ass bitch! 

Not to many people know, but Kay Slay used to be pretty large in the Grafitti world back when he was know as Dez. As a matter of fact you can see footage of a young Kay talking about bombing trains and freestyling in the classic Graf documentary Style Wars. Well recently Kay returned to his roots to paint this R.I.P. Memorial mural in Harlem for Justo Faison, the founder of the Mixtape Awards who died earlier this year in a car accident in Virginia. I don’t think Kay did this whole mural himself, but I can’t make out the other two names in the piece. Even still, it looks like he’s still got some skills with a can after all these years.