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FROSTY FREEZE TA PLEEZE MEMORIAL JAM
NOW BEGINNING AT 8 PM! till 12am. Host: Ken Swift. Lets get together and Rock the house for Frosty Freeze! Goddard Riverside Center 647 Columbus Ave betw. 91st & 92nd. NYC 10025. 1,2, 3, C or E to 96th. Traditional Hip Hop energy from the Upper West Side of Manhattan where B.Boy Frosty Freeze and the Rock Steady Crew made their claim to fame. Special appearances & performances by Guest DJ’s, Writers, MC’s, B.Boys & B.Girls. Source: Scotty & Cros1 (freestylesession.com)
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Growing Pains for a Deep-Sea Home Built of Subway Cars
SLAUGHTER BEACH, Del. — Sixteen nautical miles from the Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, a building boom is under way at the Red Bird Reef.
Tim Shaffer for The New York Times
A New York City subway car being added to an artificial reef off the coast of Delaware. The reef’s success has led to crowding for marine life and fishermen. More Photos >
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Dot Earth: A Reef With Wheels and Seats (April 8, 200 
One by one, a machine operator has been shoving hundreds of retired New York City subway cars off a barge, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.
“They’re basically luxury condominiums for fish,” Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said as one of 48 of the 19-ton retirees from New York City sank toward the 666 already on the ocean floor.
But now, Delaware is struggling with the misfortune of its own success.
Having planted a thriving community in what was once an underwater desert, state marine officials are faced with the sort of overcrowding, crime and traffic problems more common to terrestrial cities.
The summer flounder and bass have snuggled so tightly on top and in the nooks of the subway cars that Mr. Tinsman is trying to expand the housing capacity. He is having trouble, however, because other states, seeing Delaware’s successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York City provides free.
Crisscrossing over the reef, commercial pot fishermen keep getting their lines tangled with those of smaller hook-and-reel anglers, and the rising tension has led the state to ask federal marine officials to declare the area off limits to large commercial fishermen.
As the reef has become more popular, theft and sabotage of fishing traps and pots has more than doubled in the last several years, said Capt. David Lewis of the Delaware Bay Launch Service. “People now don’t just steal the fish inside the pots out here, they’ve started stealing the pots, too,” he said.
The reef, named after New York City’s famous Redbird subway cars, now supports more than 10,000 angler trips annually, up from fewer than 300 in 1997. It has seen a 400-fold increase in the amount of marine food per square foot in the last seven years, according to state data.
Mr. Tinsman said his department was doing everything it could to expand the capacity, noting that last year, when subway cars were unavailable, he sank a 92-year-old tugboat and the YOG-93, a 175-foot decommissioned Navy tanker built in 1945 for the planned invasion of Japan. Fifty subway cars are due this month, he said.
“The secret is out, I guess,” said Michael G. Zacchea, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority official in charge of getting rid of New York City’s old subway cars.
Mr. Zacchea added that Delaware’s prospects for expanding the reef looked grim because New York State has said it wanted all of the city’s retired subway cars once the United States Army Corps of Engineers updates the state’s reef permit this summer. Mr. Zacchea said he would soon stop shipments out of state, saving perhaps $2 million in transport costs. As a good faith gesture, the city probably will provide about 100 cars to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey before out-of-state deliveries are halted.
While New York State works to get its permit in place, other states are pushing hard to get what they can from the city, Mr. Zacchea said.
Last month, for example, New Jersey, which stopped taking the cars in 2003 because of environmental concerns, asked the city for 600 of them.
Tim Dillingham, the executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group based in Sandy Hook, N.J., said natural rock and concrete balls were far safer and more durable materials for artificial reefs.
“Those materials also cost more, and we’re sensitive to the realities of budget crunches in many states,” Mr. Dillingham said.
The American Littoral Society and other environmental groups opposed the use of the Redbird cars because they have small levels of asbestos in the glue used to secure the floor panels and in the insulation material in the walls.
State and federal environmental officials approved the use of the Redbirds and other cars for artificial reefs in Delaware and elsewhere because they said the asbestos was not a risk for marine life and has to be airborne to pose a threat to humans.
Mr. Dillingham said his group had pushed New Jersey to use only New York City’s cars, which have only stainless steel on the outside, contain less asbestos and are more durable. Delaware, which oversees nine artificial reef sites in state waters and five, including Red Bird Reef, in federal waters, was the first state to get subway cars from New York City, in August 2001.
In the last several years, the reefs have drawn swift open-ocean fish, like tuna and mackerel, that use the reefs as hunting grounds for smaller prey. Sea bass like to live inside the cars, while large flounder lie in the silt that settles on top of the cars, said Mr. Tinsman, the Delaware official.
States have experimented with other types of artificial reef materials, including abandoned automobiles, tanks, refrigerators, shopping carts and washing machines.
Mr. Tinsman particularly favors the newer subway cars with stainless steel on the outside to create reefs. “We call these the DeLoreans of the deep,” he said.
Subway cars in general, he said, are roomy enough to invite certain fish, too heavy to shift easily in storms and durable enough to avoid throwing off debris for decades.
“The one problem I see with them,” Mr. Tinsman said, “is that just like the DeLoreans, there are only a limited number.”
Brick Ladies at Ad Hoc Art
Lady Pink and Aiko: Brick Ladies of NYC
Ad Hoc Art - 49 Bogart Street, Brooklyn NY
21 March - 20 April 2008
The work of Lady Pink will be on view at the Ad-Hoc Art Center in Brooklyn until April 21st. This legend of New York’s graffiti scene shares the show with a younger counterpart, Aiko, who is also a rising star.
Lady Pink came of age in the old New York of the 1970s and 1980s. She made her name as the first major woman graffiti artist who held her own against the male competition when it came to gracing (or vandalizing) the trains with new designs. The city’s graffiti gang would siege the MTA train yards at night, evade transit police, and write on the trains. Today’s shiny silver metal subway cars were actually specifically designed to accommodate a chemical solution that can swiftly rinse off any graffiti. The old trains received a coat of red paint and were therefore a far better canvas for spray paint.
Much of the general public view spray painted trains as vandalized signs of urban decay. Those with eye for Graffiti experienced sublime suspense as the headlight shined in the distance. It would always be a surprise to see “whose” subway would pull into the station. Would it be a design that had been plowing through the tunnels for a couple of weeks? Would it be new work that was just done last night? This was the golden age of New York Graffiti.
Lady Pink, Fat Brick Lady. Via of Ad Hoc Art.
Giuliani brought this era to end when he took office and set about to Disneyfy New York. He empowered the police to pursue more aggressive and vindictive tactics against the graffiti artists in Train Yards. A new fleet of subway cars resisted spray paint and sealed the deal. Graffiti artists responded by focusing on other spaces throughout the city. However, there was no urban surface that could compete with the subway car’s visibility.
Some graffiti artists like Pink crossed over into producing pictures for the fine art world. Perhaps such a shift comes naturally as this generation ages and can no longer pull all nighters in the train yards with the same ease.
Lady Pink brings the experience of writing on the trains to the canvas as she paints with acrylics. After working with the bold and bright colors of Spray paints for many years, she continues to gravitate towards a vivid palette. She also invests in depicting small and linear details, which is another characteristic of the graffiti style. The theme of decomposing structures, which were her prime sites, appears frequently in her work.
In Queen Matilda, Lady Pink depicts a surrealistic city on a hill over which one of her architectural brick women as queen and fortress looms. Her love for detail abounds in small architectural details and flourishes that she packs in. Brightly colored cars circle round the cliffs at the base. Stained glass windows shimmer as the Queen’s nipples. A subway track dynamically zig zags through the composition.
Graffiti Tags from other artists adorn the calf of the queen and the subway train. A certain virtuoso is legible here as it can be difficult to copy the style of other artist’s tags so perfectly. This is one of Pinks trademarks and each copied tag is a friendly tribute to a fellow artist.
The subject of Queen resonates with the artist’s own biography. Her unique position as one of the few prominent woman artist in the graffiti scene gave rise to her reputation as its Queen. In an era that is hungry for feminist role models, many commentators have championed her in this light. This is not the artist’s frame of reference. Her primary agenda remains the creation of fascinating work far more than forwarding a social political agenda. Nevertheless, she has embraced this coronation as an opportunity to mentor younger artists and serves as role model. Much as she depicts the Queen in her own stylistic terms, she has embraced this regal social role on her terms as well.
Lady Pink dreams up new paintings at the sketch book. It is here that she is able to work out an idea and bring from the moment of inspiration to an intricate composition. For example, an opulent and detailed dress of Queen Elizabeth 1 inspired Pink and sparked the process that culminated in Queen
Matilda.
Lady Pink, “Violette”, 2008, acrylic on wood, 36 x 22 inches. Via Ad Hoc Art.
In front of the canvas, the artist builds up her pictures in a manner that is reminiscent of Old Masters like Titian. She starts with a basic coat of a certain color and then begins to build up details by one section of the
canvas at a time. This early stage of color field was left without the level of detail in Lovely Entrapment, which juxtaposes another Brick Lady against a pink background. The sharp lines of this Brick woman contrasts with the soft lines of the wash. A subtle pink flame seems to flicker in the washes undulations. The figure is based upon a goddess figure from Cambodian Ruins. The blue floral flourishes add formal interests are a painterly form of the swirling lines of graffiti.
Urban Decay was another captivating canvas in the show that depicts a primal earth mother as a Brick Lady in front of labyrinth of intersecting freeways. Stormy gray clouds surround a lone patch of bright orange sky. It speaks to the artist’s project of revitalizing a dejected urban landscape
with flourishes of graffiti. The work tapes into that fascination with post-industrial dystopia. The contrast between the hyperactivity of the city and the serenity of the goddess is reinforced by the background’s haze and the sharp lines of the figure n the foreground.
Lady Prink remarked to your commentator that “If everything was shiny and sterile, things would be pretty scary.” It is an adamant rejection of sterility of modernism that the artist cultivated long before it was
fashionable. Lady Pink never went to art school. Her style was honed in the train yards of New York. The work continues to deeply resonate with a city that much like Brick woman in Urban Decay is seeking a moment of serenity amidst the industrialized hyperactivity.
