Long Island City’s 5pointz; brunch options; Chocolate Factory notes
A piece on 5Pointz, Long Island City
Light on the LIC linkage this post-holiday morning, but a nice piece on Meres One, the founder of the 5pointz graffiti museum:
“The block at Jackson Avenue and Davis Street has evolved into 5Pointz, a living graffiti installation overseen by internationally acclaimed aerosol artist Meres One. Meres’s cultivation of freedom of expression at 5Pointz does not cater to a commercial purpose. “I wear different hats: tour guide, teacher, security guard, curator,” he said as he nodded at the building, calling his project a “pivotal point in graffiti making.” Allowing both creators of Rembrandt reproductions and novices to work at his space, he seeks to propel the art form into the next generation, offering weekly summer classes to aspiring local artists.”
Incidentally, 5pointz is just the graffiti on the walls of the building. The actual building is used as the Crane Street Studios, a cluster of art studios and galleries including Local Project.
In other linkage, if you’re hungry for some brunch, here’s a nice shot of a hefty plate at Cafe Henri. Since brunch can be in high demand around here, especially on these winter weekends when leaving Long Island City is a little more challenging to leave, be aware that Sage General Store is now serving weekend brunch, as is Lounge47, and beginning sometime in March, so will Manducatis Rustica. Current brunch options in Long Island City include Tournesol, Dorian’s, Court Square Diner and Communitea.
Chocolate Factory’s (re)develop (death valley), Long Island City
And last, but never least, the new production at Long Island City’s Chocolate Factory Theater, (re)develop (death valley) is getting some press:
“In “(re)develop (death valley),” seen at the theater on Friday, Mr. Rogers focuses on the disparate notions of home and property by exploring the connection between his Queens neighborhood and gold-rush-era ghost towns. In this real-time video and performance installation the audience sits in front of several overlapping screens. The work begins with a sharply edited interview with a 78-year-old Long Island City resident whose memories create a vivid sense of place. As Chris Peck’s score generates an ominous aural landscape — Mr. Rogers also plays guitar and sings — four performers appear behind and on the screens.”
Profile of Meres One at 5Pointz [Old Columbia Spectator]
Eggs Florentine at Cafe Henri [flickr]
Review of Chocolate Factory’s “(re)develop (death valley)” [NY Times]
More Chocolate Factory [Culture Bot]
New CSA for Astoria/LIC [AstoriaNYC]
Review of Keith Haring at Deitch [16miles]
5Pointz is an eyesore. It’s about time the owners demolished that wreck and built an office high rise or luxury apartment building there.
LOL.
Yeah #2, because glassy towers are never eyesores.
I hope #2 is joking
No #5, I don’t think they are kidding. It’s sad to hear that negative mentality exists among us. 5pointz is an amazing legacy of true artists. It’s sad that graffiti is still so misunderstood, especially in one of the few city spaces it has refuge. Meres is amazing. Go to the building and look at the pieces up close. Some of them will absolutely blow you away.
6, I will never be convinced that graffiti is beautiful, as striking as it can be. I can certainly appreciate its place in art and the skill of certain artists. But I just don’t personally care for graffiti art. There’s a lot of crappy examples of it. It can be too garish and cartoony. And It’s link to urban decay and the ghetto, and all that it represents, is a huge turnoff. Sorry!
Is the Chocolate Factory Theater anti-develpoment?
Uh oh. #8 is gearing up for another battle.
The show going on at the Chocolate Factory does seem pretty cool this week… I’ve never bothered going before but may try to make it:
“re)DEVELOP (death valley) is a real-time video performance installation about the collision between the personal attachment to the idea of home as homestead, a place to put down roots – and the idea of real estate as a salable commodity, a marketing platform, a uptopian fantasy, and a representation of wealth. Inspired by my experience of living and working in Long Island City, Queens (the site of a massive and unprecedented redevelopment project), (re)DEVELOP will combine real time video processing and found footage to construct a series of interweaving visual narratives around ideas of shared, temporary and abandoned living spaces.”
#8 will just have to go to the show to find out, huh?
Graffiti is art until it’s painted on the side of a building *you* own. ;)
Some graffiti sucks, and some is great. Just like any other ‘accepted’ form of ‘art’. I agree with #6 in the sense that you should look at it individually before you discount it entirely. It just has a bad rap and much of it sucks. But there are some serious masterpieces on buildings in this city. And some of it is great political art.
Hey Banksy, please come paint a piece on the side of my building. Please?
Banksy is much closer to fine art, in my opinion, than the example on this page by Meres. I just can’t stand the glorification of the ghetto lifestyle: the bling, the ghetto blaster, the drug dealer’s sneakers on the overhead wire. It’s bad taste and not terribly imaginative. But it’s got lots of color, as my mother might say.
Why is any depiction of ‘ghetto lifestyle’ automatically catagorized as ‘glorification’. It’s just a reflection of their reality. If you want to blame ghettoization in this city, blame Robert Moses… it’s his fault they exist in the first place.
Right, let’s blame the white guy who died nearly 30 years ago. Give me a break.
Just because someone is dead does not mean they did not leave a legacy behind. good or bad. MLK is dead, and please don’t tell me he didn’t make a mark or have a huge impact the effect of which is still present today.
No one — including the now-ripe Robert Moses — is putting a gun to the head of people to have out of wedlock and neglected/abused children they can’t afford, indulge the whims of men who treat women like trash, destroy their lives with drugs, worship violence, and basically throw their lives away while they look for excuses. While I empathize with poor decent people who are trapped living in an awful housing development thrown up by careless bureaucrats more than a half century ago, it’s up to them to get their own community’s acts together, and stop glamorizing the very aspects of their culture (including graffiti) that are holding them back.
19 probably also thinks it’s about time that people in wheel chairs should just get up and walk.
Right, 20. So the message to people in the bad neighborhoods should be just throw in the towel because you’re toast no matter what you do, so just blame Robert Moses because he built your ghetto? What utter nonsense. I’m shocked you think so badly of these folks. I don’t think many people, including our own president, would agree with your philosophy of hopelessness.
What exactly are we talking about here? Graffiti is not a glorification of ‘deadbeat’ culture as described by #19. It’s an art expression. If anything, I think it defines the culture rather than glorifies it… graffiti grew out of disenfranchisement, and rebellion against authority and the upper classes. I don’t think people who live in or come from the ghetto have an illusion about it being some kind of utopia to glorify.
It is an art form. Whether you like it or not, despite the fact that it appears on building walls instead of gallery walls (which graffiti has been known to grace), it’s an artistic representation which overall is not meant to glorify anything, but to EXPRESS what is being felt. Yes I know, half the throw-up and tagging is crap, but what else do people have but words? The concept of property itself is a construct, and the criminalization of graffiti is intentional retaliation to keep graffiti (like the ghetto) in its place.
If you have ever lived in a ghetto you would know the sense of invisibility one can feel as a human, and to just write your name on a wall can actually feel like it validates your existence. People born into the bourgeoisie will likely not relate to this feeling.
21, since when did being in a wheel chair signify hopelessness and throwing in the towel? You characterized ghetto residents as people who “have out of wedlock and neglected/abused children they can’t afford, indulge the whims of men who treat women like trash, destroy their lives with drugs, worship violence, and basically throw their lives away while they look for excuses.” Then to cover your clearly uninformed and unapologetic view that the above represents the mainstream of ghetto life, you throw a bone to “.. poor decent people who are trapped..”.
23, are you going to argue that those conditions don’t exist in poor inner city neighborhoods? You can be a progressive liberal without being delusional.
Man 24, you just don’t get it do you? I have no idea where you get the idea that I am saying anything close to that. I am pointing out that the majority of ghetto residents are crippled by a history of economic hardship beyond any individual’s control. I am not excusing criminals, drug, addicts, etc. but I also don’t think this is as simple as saying they chose this lifestyle from a wide array of opportunities.
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Dominie’s Hoek has brunch as well.