During our annual Mew Year’s House-cleaning ritual we uncovered these two toy mini-figures of DJs. We love (and are slightly disconcerted by) how angry one of them looks. The headphones and eyeglasses are a nice touch. The look reminds us of early 2000s and the late “electronic” era. We bought these years ago at Toy Tokyo, a specialty toy and model shops in the East Village of New York.
The British street art group known as the London Police has been leaving its mark on urban landscapes around the world since the late ’90s when they visited Amsterdam and started painting their iconic characters on the walls of the Dutch city. They recently painted this mural in New York’s Lower East Side (near the intersection of 1st Ave and E. 1st St.) as part of the Centre-fuge Public Art Project, which works with local property developers and construction sites to devote temporary spaces to a rotating outdoor gallery of artists and their work.
International street-art star Buff Monster created a visual take on the “I Love New York” idea in his own style with this graffiti-art mural in New York’s East Village. The mural is part of the Centre-fuge Public Art Project, which works with local property developers and construction sites to devote temporary spaces to a rotating outdoor gallery of artists and their work.
This sweet abstract-geometric mural on Eldridge Street in New York’s Lower East Side is a commissioned street art piece by NYC-based artist Jason Woodside. His work has become part of New York City’s landscape in a series of massive mural projects for the New Museum, British ad agency Mother NY, and at restaurants such as Galli, Rippers and Roberta’s Pizza, as well as in collaborations with Obey Clothing and patrons like Mister Spoils.
Awesome dude Hiroshi shows off his “Don’t Fuck It Up” graphical t-shirt at the rooftop BBQ party in New York York City this past weekend. It was one of the fashion-style highlights of the evening. Love it.
In June, Tokyo Bike opened one of it’s minimalist bicycle shops on the Bowery, in New York City’s Lower East Side. The location is prime and puts the shop square in the heart of downtown’s art, culture and style scene: The New Museum is across the street, fashion photographer Terry Richardson’s studio is down the block, Helmut Lang is a few doors down the street, and dozens of art galleries and hip boite dot the surrounding border area where the LES meets Nolita.
It’s the first stateside store of the independent Japanese bike brand, and currently it’s only planned as a summer pop-up store. But depending on public reception and sales this summer, the company may be opening a permanent home in the city in the near future.
Tokyo Bike’s bicycles are designed in Japan, built (like most of the world’s bikes) in Taiwan, and designed with the concept of “slow” urban cycling, where the experience of an easy-going bike ride in the city trumps concerns for speed and high-performance. That said, TB’s bikes are remarkably light (perfect for carrying up and down the stairs of an NYC tenement apartment building) and styled with an understated, elegant minimalism.
Here’s a massive “claw” graffiti art tag with the word “Ideas” on a parked shipping container in New York’s East Village. The graffiti art is by the graff writer Claw, a.k.a., Claw Money.
The esplanade along the East River in downtown New York City is not on the tourist map, and it’s less of a destination for most Manhattanites than other, more stylish waterfront hangouts along the West Side. But for those locals in the deepest, farthest, eastern-most reaches of the East Village and Chinatown especially, the long stretch of waterfront paths and parks is an oasis for families, cyclists, BBQers, weekend soccer players and even recreational fisherman. It’s a perfect and incredibly scenic place to learn how to ride a bicycle, complete with training wheels, as the picture above shows. By the way, that’s the Williamsburg Bridge in the distance. It’s 110 years old and one of three bridges connecting downtown Manhattan to Brooklyn.
This cheeky piece of street art on the Bowery in New York’s East Village shows Queen Elizabeth II holding a protective gas/oxygen mask attached to a plastic water bottle labelled “Dasani Air,” a play on Coke’s Dasani brand of bottled water.
