Sunday, June 9, 2013

Visiting 5ptz in Queens


hello from NYC.  that's right, mindy and i beat feet outta the burgeoning corn fields of indiana and spent our day in the city.  usually when we come to NYC we spend the majority of our time in the west village, soho, and just the general NYU area of the city.  we love it there and the neighborhoods are fun to explore for graffiti, food, and shopping.  but this time we are only here for 2 days, so we opted for a hotel instead of our usual apartment rental.  we are staying in the tourist hell of 34th st., but its only for a couple of days and at least it's not times square.

when we arrived went looking for something to fill our bellies.  we found singapura, and had some high hopes for some home-cooked kway chap, bee hoon, rendang, or sambal.  but it was disappointing.  quite frankly, singapura sucked.  if you are looking for singaporean food, you won't find it here.  but shitty food didn't dampen our spirits as we hoped the next train to queens and the graffiti writer's mecca of 5ptz.




 as the train comes to the station, it rises out of the underground and into the sky.  and there is the 5ptz, right as you come in to the light.  a giant mural of biggie.  all the meres light bulbs and the names of a great generation of writers.  exciting.  we wandered around the old warehouse for a couple of hours.  there were a few painters working on new pieces.  it was fun to see things develop.  everyone was friendly, though, i'm not one to interrupt someone working on a new piece.  it really is an amazing place and we only got to see the outside of it.  there so much more inside the gates, that is off limits to the public except for special occasions.  5ptz is a living, breathing work of art that is constantly changing as new stuff goes up and older work gets covered up.  i guess if you think of the building itself as a canvas, then this is a work of art no one owns and that is never finished.  what a place.












we then hopped across the street to MOMA's PS1 site.  PS1 seems to be the PoMOMA, and more or less, received a collective, 'meh' from the two of us.  i love contemporary museums and contemporary art, but PS1 was 'loop and leave' worthy.  i'm not one to go and research the art at the museum before i visit, but it's not like i'm a moron when it comes to art history, or art currently.  i guess i just think that the PS1 site could be used better.  5ptz is such an interactive, fun and interesting space, right across the street.  PS1 in contrast offers mostly just overly thought out grad school crap that is uninteresting.  i don't care about your philosophy, show me something that is interesting.


after a wonderful dinner at Bobo in the west village, we are done for the day.


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