First and Fifteenth

Beyond Dave’s Story, I wanted to have some slick romantic pick up lines for Brooklyn to have and hold. And I wanted a couple to wrap those lines around. And fortunately, Livingroom Johnson and his wifey Katiya, and their beauitful baby crossed my path on Schemerhorn St. one day.

Livingroom is an interesting guy, an author and raconteur, who is a little myth and a lot of shoe game. Where fact and fiction begin and end with him is a hard to figure, and since he’s a writer, totally beside the point. He and his wifey are perfect as Mr. And Ms. Brooklyn, an unlikely pair that seem inevitable, with an adorable baby that sums it all up perfectly. They walk towards each other on Livingston and meet in the middle, where a stroller has appeared in front of livingroom (that’s how it happens in real life too!). Above them unfurl the words MEET ME DOWNTOWN FOR A FEW, and below them a poem of love featuring the words ninety-nine over and over in tribute to the three 99 cent stores that occupy the entire block. The black and white figures  are painted in rustoleum with stock tips, and consistent to my work going back to the 80s. In fact the whole work goes back to when I started, my only palette was black and white. It represents the whole world, light and dark, the black and white cookie, film noir, the WAB (white and black) Crew,  and of course, the color of a newspaper. Thanks to all the preceding,  black and white  holds gravitas. I’m sure I dont have to remind you Black and white is also the color palette of speed and illegal deeds.

There’s more to tell, check back tomorrow and I’ll tell it

A neighborhood in decline has always been an ideal place to work. Generally, you are only improving the situation with a little bit of paint, and the work tends to last longer than in the pricey precincts of the city. Now that I’m getting calls to help revitalize areas, its not irony, its people seeing my work they way I’ve always seen it, as an improvement. In Coney Island, Philadelphia, Syracuse and  Downtown Brooklyn, the work we made heralds the forthcoming development, but also testifies to the cherished aspects of the neighborhoods we worked in, aspects that may be lost as the neighborhoods change. In Coney, it was the raucous cacophony of signage, In Philly, it was the eradicated graffiti that ruled the rooftops for decades, in Syracuse it was the amazing bridges and the lumbering freight trains that rumbled across them, and finally in brooklyn, the native brooklynites that will probably be pushed out by rising rents.

Dave Villorente grew up right in the neighborhood, and I’ll go on record as saying he is the only person I know with more verbal game than me. I call him the Brooklyn Story repository, as he has an endless supply of first person accounts about growing up in Brooklyn and will spin them for you one after another with great clarity and detail. As part of that talent, He’s not good with dates, but has a remarkable faculty for recalling what song was big at the time, which is his way of  establishing chronology for the events in his life. His memory is failsafe, all the more interesting as he is a product of the 80′s NYC, and would be excused if he forgot it all. I wanted parts of Love Letter Brooklyn to reflect his life and times, and hoped he would take ownership of it, as communities had taken ownership of the work we did in Philly and Syracuse.

And although it was based on one, it speaks for many that have told me they grew up in the area and see themselves in the work. That is what they call representing. Happy to do it.