A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part four
King Adz hits NYC for a fresh dose of Big Apple love.
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Sun is shining weather is sweet...
So I wake and the weather is back to NY summer - a mekhaye! It's business as usual as I move out of the flat, sorry I mean apartment, and lamp along to the Path train to shuttle my tokhes to NJ to interview graff legend Quik. When he's in the US (he hates the place) he stays in Newport, which is where a lot of the banks moved their offices and personnel to post 9-11. I later find out from Quik that the place is crawling with undercover bacon and is the safest place around. It's a strange Starbucks-clean kinda place and as I glide to his spot I see a lot of Abercrombie-ish lifestyle shots waiting to be distilled onto the page. Stepford Wives for the year 2G+9. You'd have to be lobotomized to stay here, but I guess they already are if they're working in finance.
Quik is a real gent and gives me an amazing hour-long interview about his personal history of graffiti, street art and art in general. For those who don't know, Quik is one of the only real-deal artists working today who was one of the original artists featured in the seminal film Style Wars. He shares some killer stories and ends with the line, ''I am a Black Amerikkkan painter, not your graffiti schmuck." He slips me three disks of his work ranging from 1983 to now and we're done and dusted (you will have to wait a while to hear the whole story).
I zip back on the Path. Two tanned and shades-on-the-subway-rich girls are on the train, each with a little dog in a custom-made doggie bag, and I understand a little more about the serious division of wealth in NY. A group of geeky looking guys get on the train and begin a 10-minute conversation about handshakes and who has the wettest one. As I listen to them, internally I'm like, "You're fucking with me, right?" But when I clock them they are serious as hell.
I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of Greenwich Village with my pal Charlotte - who lives in NY and reps David LaChapelle and other serious photographic talent during her 9.30 to 6.30 workday. We have no destination in mind (the best way to travel) and while we promenade, I catch some classic NY moments: Kids playing in the fountain in Washington Square park (old-school place to score, but now full of cops and under CCTV scrutiny); Skaters using stacks of concrete road sections to get some air (they don't like to use tarmac here); Undercover cops nicking some poor bastard; A guy with a stall in Greenwich village selling a wide selection of vintage Jazz mags (and I'm not talking about the lovely music form here); a serious chess tournament in the park... Sun is shining, weather is sweet - these are the sights that fuel the city that has stolen my heart. This is what I came for: A New York State of mind.
On the way home I stop off at K-Mart for some mini DV tapes and discover that they're selling Acid House smiley face T-shirts, which reminds me of the, "They're selling Hippie wigs in Woolworths" line from Withnail. Life does indeed imitate art.
We go to a classic '50s diner and eat for England: burger, fries, onion rings, coke, vanilla shake (tastes like a liquified Milky Bar and is so sickly it makes me want to churl) and then head out to Brooklyn to the party to celebrate the completion of Dot Da Genius' new studio. Which is cool and I shoot some nice film of Dot speaking about his plans and meet his nice mates, who are all serious Gs from BK, but very polite and respectful to this old man. "This is my boy King Adz," is how Dot introduces me. As I don't burn trees in Belize I slope away and ride my borrowed Jeep back into the city.
Still no fake designer watch, but I do have a day of shopping set aside in the week, so maybe then.
Where did the Jeep come from? Oh, I forgot to say, I have been invited to go to Ron English's 50th Birthday BBQ with my boy Tristan Eaton (who designed the Dunny and Munny toy) and it's like in the middle of NJ and so I sorted out a ride. This is gonna be one fuck of a braaii. I'll drop the science tomorrow and let you know who what when where why...
King Adz is HUCK’s roaming street culture reporter and the author of The Urban Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Graffiti Generation.
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A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part four (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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