Snake America Announcement: GQ
Hey fools:
The latest newsletter is here on GQ.com, not in the email:
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-beach-towel
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-beach-towel
https://www.gq.com/story/snake-america-beach-towel
please enjoy.
I also have shirts for sale from the Miami trip:
https://snakeusa.bigcartel.com/product/snake-america-miami-shirt
https://snakeusa.bigcartel.com/product/snake-america-miami-shirt
https://snakeusa.bigcartel.com/product/snake-america-miami-shirt
Please buy and then enjoy.
I don't want to rip anyone off, so here's a story about a graffiti fight I saw last year. Like I said, GQ.com.
Rime: Code, 532 Gallery in Manhattan, April 5, 2018
Hung with Jay Bil last night — he was going to a graffiti art opening exhibit in Chelsea, not far from my office. Art openings are always in Chelsea on Thursday night, and drinks are free, so it’s a scene. We hit Stella’s Pizza, on 9th and 17th, at my recommendation. Stella’s was the first meal I bought in New York as an employed person, lunch on my first working day, at MLB.com, March 8, 2008. Tara Krieger and I were training under my friend Bryan. Tara went to law school when the season ended and I still talk to Bryan every day. Jay didn’t say whether the slice was good or not. I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t get one.
We get to the opening, on the second floor of a gallery on 25th between 10th and 11th. Jay says what’s up to his boss, Haze, and another graffiti legend, who Jay introduced me to five years ago, Chino BYI. We go upstairs. It’s packed and we wait in the stairwell for 10 minutes. We get inside and it’s a scene. A jazz trio in the corner, men in distressed jeans, T-shirts and blazers, girls in North Face Steep Techs, some in formal wear, Euros dressed like Barack Obama and/or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, people, mostly men, with giant backpacks on, and a guy in his 50s with acne and a bowl cut who’s a dead ringer for William Fichtner, the corrupt banker in Heat, doing the door. We can’t see the art on the walls because the gallery is so full of people.
We walk around. It’s Rime’s show. He’s a 25-year graf vet and Jay’s homie. It’s his fifth or sixth solo show. Big paintings displaying an obvious graffiti palate, and which to me share the artist Sam Friedman’s bright 80s McDonalds wall-art colors, and body parts that look close to those drawn by John Kricfalusi, the animator, and a debt to golden-era comics and cartoons. Lots of orange and purple. Jay and Rime agree that Rime owes him a painting and that they’re meeting in L.A. soon. Rime complains to Jay he has getting to bed too late, but that the opening was successful.
A fight breaks out. A man with an Asap Yams (RIP) beard in a knee-length khaki coat and Balmain jeans is whupping or getting whupped by another guy in white pants, whose jacket I can’t make out. It’s chaos. Women are yelling and guys are laughing and running away. The music stops. Did someone get stabbed? The Euros who seem to own or run the gallery are quietly telling whoever they make eye contact with to please leave the gallery, and for everyone to go home. No one goes anywhere. There is blood on the ground now and the band is in the corner holding their trombones and the wine is all over the floor. The guy in the long khaki coat’s face is bleeding and his friends are defending and looking after him but the paintings are still on the wall and the art is untouched. Jay is watching the whole time and doesn’t move. Only a few people leave the room, but there is somehow much more space now.
Things return to normal. The fight over, two of Rime’s interns come up to say hello to Jay, the male intern thanking Jay for getting him into Uncle Murda, the rapper, who Jay also got me into. More people say hi to Jay at this graffiti thing than said hi to my friend Gil at the hardcore show the night before. We check out the rest of the paintings and go to leave. We see Rime chatting on the stairs with the guy who started the fight. Rime asks Jay to tell Giz, a legendary 1990s graffiti writer who is wearing a slate blue sports coat, to come upstairs. Giz is hanging outside with a handful of other graffiti writers. Jay says Giz is a construction worker now who builds penthouses for millionaires.
We’re outside, across the street. My legs hurt and I am sitting down. I mention leaving since there’s a movie I want to see downtown, “The Great Silence,” starring Klaus Kinski, at The Quad at 9:15. Jay says to wait — he doesn’t think it’s over. Jay is getting texts about the fight from people who weren’t there, but as I write this, he still hasn’t asked who was involved. We get more information from his phone about the fight: the guy in the khaki jacket wasn’t stabbed but was hit in the face with a sock full of rocks. Jay is right. The fight re-materializes right near us. A guy sent by the guy who started the fight punches the guy in the knee-length khaki coat in the face in the middle of the street.
We leave. We get donuts at Doughnut Plant and I get tacos from the scaffolding place on Sixth and 23rd, across from the Red Lobster. The last time I ate here it rained so hard I stayed inside an extra half hour. None of the plates here match. We walk to 14th, Jay gets on the train and I go to the movies, but I mixed up The Quad and Film Forum. The Great Silence is not playing at The Quad, on 13th, but at Film Forum, which is 15 minutes away, not enough time, and doesn’t take Moviepass. There's nothing I want to see at The Quad. I take the F home and only have one bite of my second donut. We still don’t know who hit who in the face with a sack full of rocks.
thanks everyone.