Why I Went to the Brooklyn Museum in the First Place

My friend told me that the Brooklyn Museum was going to feature a display of graffiti artists for this month's First Saturday party, which,for those of you who don't know, is a very ingenious party that the museum holds on the first Saturday of every month. Every one gets in free after five, families are welcome and there are special exhibits, movies and music, which tend to be organized around a theme. I've been to several in the past, and while they can be fun and interesting, they also tend to be crowded and noisy with lots of families and kids, cute kids, yes, but still, running wild all over the place.

I wanted to make sure I made it out to this event cause I figured there'd be some good street-style trend-spotting and I also wanted to see the graffiti display. I'm not a HUGE fan of the whole graffiti scene, but its art-from-the-underground connection to the street does tend to tug at my heart strings.

So I get a great parking space, get to the museum and damn, I found out the first Saturday isn't until the next week. Oh well, as you can see from my previous post, I had a good time anyway.


^^Come back next week!

So for those of you who are intrigued by the sound of event and perhaps want to attend, here is the front/back of the flier. If you don't want to click on the images to enlarge them, some of the featured events are the screening of "Style Wars," a documentary about New York graffiti writers, "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," and "Wild Style," a hiphop movie made in 1982, which features several well-know graff artists from that era. There will also be an artist talk, featuring Crash, artist Ellis Gallagher will discuss the history of graffiti and there will be music performances featuring beatboxing, emceeing, breakdancing and deejaying. Phew! Lots of stuff!


^^Front of flier.


^^Back of flier.


^^And then after my little trip to the museum, I picked up my kid from BAM, where he had been watching Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," (which he gives a thumbs-up to). As you head toward the Manhattan Bridge on Flatbush Avenue, BAM pretty much marks the start of Downtown Brooklyn. A little ways down from BAM I saw this graffiti on a building near the Fulton Mall, and figured, heck, in the name of my schedule screw up, let me preserve some endangered graffiti. Hate it or love it, take a close look, with the Nets coming to Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Clock Tower being turning into condos, it's looking more and more like a marker of the past, and probably within the next ten years there won't be even a trace of its existence.