Have you ever walked around in Lower Manhattan and noticed a trail of paint on the sidewalk?
About 3 years ago, one of my friends in school decided to follow the trail around and noticed that the trail produced the image that you see above; a strange-looking rendering of what appeared to be the word “momo.” MOMO, we found out, was the name of an artist that used to be based in NYC, and sure enough, the one responsible for tagging his name across the width of Manhattan.
After requesting a meetup, MOMO told my friend that he accomplished this task by fixing 5 gallon paint buckets to the back of his bike, poking a hole in the bottom of the containers, and riding though the West Village, SoHo, Greenwich Village, East Village, and Alphabet City. Momo made the tag in 2006. Some parts of the line have been covered up by roadwork and redone sidewalks but most of the line is still visible.
To me, the interesting thing about the line is how both similar and different it is to regular graffiti. Essentially, most graffiti writers enjoy seeing their name on things. The bigger they can paint it and the more visible their tag is, the more people will notice their conquering of the city. MOMO created the largest tag in New York, yet the scale of his work here, so massive that it can’t all be viewed at once, means that thousands of people will walk on it each day and never even notice it. It’s simultaneously the biggest and smallest artistic statement I have seen in my time here.
MOMO made a video about the line which you can see here.
If you ever walk over it, now you’ll know what you’re looking at.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
This is my dude right here! My homie J-Live recently dropped a single, which plans to be on his forthcoming album. He’s been making mixtapes on his BandCamp account, which are free and dope… download them! Just know that those mixtapes are not indicative of his true talent — besides being a stellar DJ, he’s also a gifted MC and lyricist. Take the time to educate yourself with his joints if you’ve been sleeping on him for the past decade or so. I’m serious.
My favorite comment on ONE of the many YouTube videos out there is this: “Nice to see that nearly 74,000 people know what fuckin time it is.” That is only ONE video on YouTube, but many out there know the truth already.
I think it’s WRONG that I have more followers than him on Twitter. Go freaking follow his ass on Twitter!!! He is a nice dude!!!
DO IT!!!
That’s RIGHT! It’s a video of Mr. Rogers breakdancing!
I actually used to break when I was really young. Someone getting a new fridge on the block would have the neighborhood kids standing and waiting for the cardboard box the fridge came in to hit curbside.
Those were the best kinds of boxes. They’d be worth the fight too; you had to get to them before the bums got to them and started sleeping in them!
The last time I moonwalked was last March. The great irony is that I broke a toe doing it.
It was nice on campus today.
The question is simple: Do zonkeys (half-zebra, half-donkey) like the one above freak you out?
Here all our hopes and dreams
are scavenged from the floor,
and fed into machines that feed on vacant eyes.
(via fuckyeahglobetrotters)
"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further."
— Pema Chodron (via marvinmitchell)
"People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all."
— The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
San Francisco, California
