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The Soul of Street Art

It’s hard to decide which side is more annoying in the recent furor over subway graffiti, art and New York’s bad old days.

On the one side, you have Mark Echo, a former graffiti artist and current clothing designer and mini-mogul. Echo recently held a ‘graffiti party,’ in which a couple dozen artists tagged up a totally fake-looking cardboard facade of a subway car, in a supposed celebration of the street art and hip hop that sprang out of City Hall’s abandonment of black and latino neighborhoods during the fiscal crisis in the 70’s. In reality, Echo is repackaging and commodifying that old youth rebellion in order to relive a bit of his youth and, well, to sell a bunch of clothes and stuff. All youth rebellion eventually gets coopted, but it’s far worse when it is self-inflicted, even if delayed.

On the other side is Mayor Mike, and the city papers’ editorial writers who bray about Mark Echo glorifying New York’s bad old days, as if the graffiti in the 70’s caused the trains to break down, the subway fare to increase, the crime rate to rise, rather than simply bringing some much needed color and vitality to a grey and crumbling city. They sound like the bunch of puritanical middle class elitists that they are.

Today, subways and buses are completely covered by corporate advertisements. Why is this not viewed as ugly vandalism? It’s pervasive and distracting, but it pays the bills, so it’s okay, apparently.

I was riding the 7 train into Manhattan the other day, which I never do (I’m an E, F guy; J if I’m going to Brooklyn), and I was awestruck after 45 Courthouse Rd – just before entering the tunnel. There, for about two city blocks, is a glorious collage of colorful, funny, sad, inventive murals and tags. It’s all over the roof-tops, the sides of buildings, the alley ways and the streets themselves. It’s clearly the product of many competing artists vying for the eyes of 7 train rides. They are courting us, entertaining us, enlightening us. And, best of all, they’re not trying to sell us a fucking thing.

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New Edition of “The Socialist” Magazine

Another season, another publication. I am the “guest editor” of the September-October issue of “The Socialist,” the magazine of the Socialist Party USA.

This issue features an essay from David McReynolds defending the “troops out now” position. Barbara Garson takes on Paul Wolfowitz and other free market “true believers” at the World Bank. B. Guise documents the decades-long love affair between ExxonMobil and G.W. Bush. Eric Chester returns to Santo Domingo, forty years after the popular uprising against United States’ domination. And I republish my requim for Si Gerson.

There’s more in the pages. The issue will hit the stands in two weeks. You might as well subscribe to the magazine. It’s not like you can count on running into me these days.

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The End of Easy Oil

There’s lots of hand-wringing over the totally-surprising rise in gas prices in the press (I mean, who would have ever predicted that rising demand and limited supply would cause price increases?). USA Today unwittingly finds a silver lining:

As she folds clothes at a Laundromat near her home in San Pablo, Calif., Thamara Morales, 30, counts up the ways high gas prices have changed her life…Trips to Wal-Mart are out. The closest one is about 15 miles away. Just to get there and back costs more than she might save by going.

Yes, this might hurt Wal-Mart. It will also hurt the sales of behemoth SUVs and minivans, and certainly discourages the construction of more pre-fab “exurban” communities. This particular American Way of Life – a two car garage in an enormous shack in a white bread suburb of nowhere in the desert, an hour-long commute to an office park, and endless driving to work, school, mall – has always been a selfish, environmentally destructive waste of resources. Soon, it may not even be affordable.

Frankly, gas prices have been too low, for too long, subsidized by the federal government’s investment in research and oil reserves. This has allowed Americans to wastefully consume without regard for the planet or even the finite nature of the resource that we are exhausting. (The Times magazine had a good article on the diminishing returns for oil production this Sunday.)

So, as much as the recent spike in gas prices hurts (and, as a car owner who needs his car for work, I know), it is good that it forces us to begin to confront our extreme dependence on oil now, before it’s too late.

I, of course, advocate a massive program of affordable housing construction in our major cities, as well as huge investments in railroad infrastructure within those cities, and between those cities and their immediate suburbs. And, yes, we should recycle and invest in alternative energy and all the other things that the hippies call for. But big cities are probably the greenest solution for our large populations, and we should begin to prepare for the inevitable migration back to the cities that will result from expensive gas.

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The Column That Never Was

The column that I was hired to write for a certain Queens weekly has been canceled before the first piece was even published. That piece, a critical look at the fall-out from Congressman Greg Meeks’ support for CAFTA, did not appear in this past Thursday’s issue, although an editorial lavishing praise on the Congressman for his championing of banks over people, was featured rather prominently.

I called to find out what happened, and was told the next day that Rep. Meeks had called the newspaper to complain about the previous post that appeared on this blarg. That’s all, she wrote.

The managing editor – who hired me – explained over and over that “integrity” is really important to the paper, and that I had really crossed a line by posting the Congressman’s voicemail message to me, without explaining that I had called him first. Of course, I explained that I hadn’t called him, and that that’s what made his personal phone call to me so noteworthy, and odd. She explained that she hadn’t actually read the piece so much as glanced at it over the shoulder of the publisher, who was livid about the whole affair. (The publisher, it should be noted, was hectoring me about how labor’s position on CAFTA was “illiberal” within seconds of my being hired and explaining my first column.) She also hadn’t read the actual submitted column itself.

Again explaining how “ethics” were so important to this paper, she asked me if I understood their position. I said, well, no, I didn’t, really, since nothing was misrepresented on my website or in the column (neither of which, again, she had read), to which she finally answered something along the lines of “well, I guess you’re just not a good fit for this paper.”

This, finally, was an answer I could accept. This is a paper that does not endorse candidates, that takes no strong positions on controversial matters (aside from that perennial controversy of curbing one’s dog). This is a paper that wants opinion writers who have no strong opinions. That’s me out, comrades.

I hold no ill will towards the paper, although I am annoyed at having been jerked around all summer. I would rather have been rejected from the start, so I could focus my energies on writing for a newspaper that has enough backbone to withstand an angry phone call from an amateurish Congressman, and genuinely wants to drive home to their readers three lanes of political traffic, instead of just the middle of the road.