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Save The Date: Friday APRIL 18th
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Archive for the ‘T.O.N.Y.’ Category
SOUL SLAM: PRINCE vs. MICHAEL JACKSON
Friday, April 11th, 2008REAL ESTATE RACISM…
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
DP Real Estate Advice: Wherever you see shoes hanging buy some property.
I grew up in one of New York City’s typical outer borough communities. Detached one family houses that were big enough to keep all of your cousins on one floor. A nice little backyard that couldn’t hold more than a rose bush and a crab apple tree. This was the typical working class ‘hood. Fuck what you heard about the urban blight. The sun would still rise every day at 6:30am and that meant you had a chance to do something with your life.
I can’t say enough about how the drug trade changed my neighborhood. Fuck that, it changed the entire city. It made neighborhoods even more segregated than they already were. Not just on some Black and white type shit, but on some haves and have nots type ish. From running through my next door neighbors open kitchen doors when we played manhunt to everyone becoming shut ins and friendly homes becoming locked away castles. Veritable jail cells for those that lived inside.
When I walked through the neighborhood the other day I was amazed to see the final results of the crack epidemic. Instead of seeing my old friends and neighbors emaciated and pale like zombies what I saw was more stark and depressing. The city has changed the zoning and construction codes for the community. The generation old texture of one family homes has been supplanted by multi-story multiple dwelling that have no regard or respect for the scale of the community.
This is my boy JUMA’s family home. It looks like they are some of the few holdouts still left. You don’t get an accurate feel for the bastardization of scale that has been allowed when you look at JUMA’s house from the front door elevation.
From the side view you can see how truly monstrous these construction code changes really are. The new building on the property adjoining JUMA’s family house is more than twice the bulk (overall square footage) of the existing homes.
These multiple dwellings are filled to the gills with round the clock renters who tax all the neighborhoods resources especially the infrastructure (roads, water and sewer services). This becomes especially pronounced since their isn’t enough mass transportation to move people in and out of this community efficiently. This is real estate racism.
This shit went down in Corona Queens because we were a predominantly working class Black neighborhood and we were ravaged by illegal drugs.
There are still a few holdouts, but they will eventually be overcome by this unbridled development. This is TASHA COX’ family crib. TASHA was the prettiest girl in the park. Her cousin played for the Mets and nobody effed with her. Her grandfolks still live in the house. They are too old and too proud to leave their home.
There goes TODD HAGINS’ family home and BARRY BROOKS(R.I.P.) mother’s crib. When your children are dead or in jail you don’t even have someone to continue the legacy of home ownership. When developers pounce on a community like a pack of ravenous jackals you can’t fight them all off.
My parents left Corona two decades ago, but we maintained our old neighborhood ties through the church on Northern Boulevard, the little league at the Louis Armstrong school, and the fact that I moved into the upstairs of my uncle’s crib on 100th Street when I was 17. My folks went to Long Island to save my younger brother from the sirene call of the streets that I could not resist. Most of the other folks in Corona weren’t as fortunate as my parents. The sunlight is once again being taken from these peoples’ eyes.
You know when a developer is godless? When he builds his multiple dwelling, his own personal cathedral to commerce right alongside a church and he dwarfs the church by comparison. Would developers be able to run roughshod over residents of a more politically wealthy community. I don’t think so.
LeRoy Jenkins: Get In Where You Fit In…
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
A Night At The BROOKLYN Museum…
Monday, April 7th, 2008
There are a whole lot of reasons I could give you for living in New York City. The fresh air, the friendly people, the wildlife, but my favorite reason for living here in New York City is the abundance of museums and cultural institutions. Without these facilities New York City would be just like the place all these hipsters vacated to come here. Prah’lee some crappy ‘burg in Ohio.
The Brooklyn Museum of Art along with the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the Brooklyn Central library at Grand Army Plaza make this one stretch of Eastern Parkway possibly the most culturally diverse corridor in the entire city. The library and the gardens are both gravy to the museum. The Brooklyn Museum of Art has a tremendous Egyptian art collection to rival even the city’s most formidable archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Plus the BMA has a sweet collection of art from the rest of the African continent along with some great pieces from African American artists.
This KEHINDE WILEY painting greets visitors in the main lobby. I like WILEY’s work because he frames Black men in triumphant and majestic poses. My lady doesn’t care for his shit because he is a fruitbag and he more than likely paints his paramours.
The big event this past weekend wasn’t just the usual First Saturday party that the museum throws. The opening of an exhibit by the renowned Japanese pop culture artist TAKASHI MURAKAMI has drawn all kinds of acclaim to the museum. Earlier this week the museum threw a private bash for their donors where it was rumored that KanYe West performed.
The opening has also drawn its share of critics as well since one of the biggest donors plans to redevelop a vast plot of acres several blocks from the museum’s steps (*more on this later this week*). There were also some protests from groups who don’t feel like public facilities should be used to promote and distribute privately held brands. MURAKAMI has designed a series of handbags for Louis Vuitton and there was a pop up shop for the luxury goods maker inside of the exhibit. I didn’t really feel a kind of way about this although in the overall sense I felt like we had come to the edge of reasons that a museum should exist for when we are selling luxury key fobs from Louis Vuitton. In the post-literate society that we live in isn’t a book enough of a luxury item?
Anyhoo…
The MURAKAMI exhibit was interesting and full of excitement and movement. I had never really studied dude’s work except for the popular stuff that you see on the internets. Seeing his painting up close and in person I really got a better understanding for sonn’s artwork. This dude MURAKAMI is fucked the fuck up in the membrane. Sonn might have been abused as a child on some pr0nographic type shit. His paintings and sculptures are rife with phallic imagery and death. Both surreal and grotesque.
Who am I to bust this guy’s hump over the subject matter he chooses to paint? Japanese folks did get their asses blasted to smithereens some fifty years ago and for those people that remember the event it might still be fresh in their pathology. That is what I translated from the images of mushrooms adorned with all-seeing eyes and decorated with skulls. MURAKAMI’s use of color is a really neat diversion too. You think that the scene your viewing is happy, but actually it’s a macabre story of decaptiation.
I see a lot of parallels in his paintings that coincide with the economic downturn here in the U.S. As we march happily along our debt piles up to the point of crushing us where we stand. At least some of us will have a brightly colored satchel to carry into Hades.
Hell in a handbasket, but not just any old bag, a TAKASHI MURAKAMI x LOUIS VUITTON handbasket.
Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy dandied up this brother’s vines in order to sell their crap.
A section from one of my favorite pieces had these images throwing up into the mouths of characters below. Methinks that 2girls1cup owes this man some guap.
This security guard was hiding behind a grotesque sculpture waiting to pounce on anyone taking pictures.
DP, 40 DAWG and TY the emcee
ThinkTank Marketing along with some of Brooklyn’s finest
My PARDON ME DUKE family
I know that I don’t have any pics of the hot ladies that were in the building, and trust me, to get all of these negroes out of their mother’s basements there had to be a grip of ladies, but Chocolate Snowflake was on my arm and that shit is unnecessary bad form to be staring at broads when you are out on the town with your bottom bi-. Nah’mean?!?
Blu Cheez Photo Gallery: TAKASHI MURAKAMI EXHIBIT @ THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART
Homegirl came with KanYe.
HIT & RUN: The OAKLEY Event…
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
In New York City, Tuesday is really Friday. In the Bizarro reality world of hanging out and being feted by companies that want to bring their products to the hands of the people that will make their shit fresh the night to party is Tuesday. Mondays and Wednesdays are popoffs as well, but Tuesdays are the truth.
If you are partying in Manhattan at a club or bar on a Friday or Saturday you are losing. I’m not going to tell you to kill yourself, but just understand that you aren’t living in the winner’s circle like me.
Hammer & Sickle vodka?!? Try to guess where this shit is from? No matter to me, an O.Bama is an O.Bama in my book. After untold rounds of H & S and Red Bull your boy didn’t fall asleep until 6pm Wednesday night.
Free booze and free giftbags for the gully.
The artists get their shirt press on. The people line up and wait eagerly.
DP politics with the fanboys. Free American Apparel t-shirts with original print designs from Todd Jones, Art Chantry and London Police is what’s up.
The man, the myth, the legend: HASHIM MILLS