Posts Tagged ‘urban’
10
Oct
2008
Banksy’s Pet Project
Street art, sausage and social commentary.
DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?
We’re known here for our love/hate relationship with Banksy. (That, and our sometimes-excessive-always-obsessive hyphenation.) We’ve followed the legendary guerrilla artist through his greatest feats, his most questionable street-cred-dampening moves, and his alleged outing.
But today, we find him in the limbo between all these things, on his first official show in NYC — a part-pet-shop, part-meat-store Frankenstein.
The Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill offers anything from pet supplies to packaged meats to animatronic foodstuffs to monkeys watching primate porn on the Discovery Channel.
We suspect the intentionally paradoxical project is intended as critical commentary on humanity’s extreme egocentricity and our toxic tendency to use the rest of the natural world as props in the grand production of our vanity-driven civilization.
Or, you know, it’s just for shits and giggles.
The most compelling piece in the show has to be the stunningly convincing jaguar napping lazily in the storefront window, swinging its tail oh-so-drowsily. But when the camera turns the corner, it reveals the “jaguar” is actually a fur coat lined with blood-red silk, its “tail” nothing more than a coat belt.
If you find yourself in the Village sometime between now and October 31, stop by 89 Seventh Avenue for an existential reality check or, you know, some monkey porn.Hey there! If you're new around here, grab our RSS feed for the freshest pickings.
05
Oct
2008
(P)hilly PARK(ing)
You heard it here first. And now you hear it here second.
GREENLIGHTING THE TRAFFIC PROBLEM
Remember The PARK(ing) Project? On September 18, Philly finally joined the 50+ cities that partake in the annual phenomenon of National PARK(ing) Day, and now we’ve got the pics to prove it.
All throughout Philly, those mythological entities known as parking spots were transformed into mini-parks, complete with grass, benches, and random hipster types hanging out.
Over 30 local groups took part in this global event, with art exhibits and educational displays giving the whole thing a distinct Philly-culture twist.
There’s even a Google Group — we’ve been drinking the Gool-Aid long enough to know this only bosts street cred. And now that Philly has officially put itself on the proverbial map with a solid urban greenification statement, we would’ve liked to see the Google vans and satellites swing by that day to put it on the digital one as well.
Because, while street cred is great when it comes to activism and cultural statements, Street View is always better — nothing gets the word out better than some 1’s-and-0’s help from the Big G.
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