Sir Aloicious Edinborough Finkelstein III

McDonald’s Walk-Through Window… No, Really!

June 3rd, 2010 by Chestykins Posted in Food, Food, New York City, WTF is up with... | 1 Comment »

Good news, Manhattanites! The McDonald's at 14th and 1st has installed a brand new walk-through window!

This might be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I don't get it. Even if it's for people on the go... it's not saving you any time! Okay, so you don't have to walk that 15 extra feet to the counter... the person getting your food still does, so now you're at the mercy of their slow asses.

I don't know... maybe Mickey D's is having trouble competing with the new trends in fast food - how can you really top the Whopper Bar or the KFC Double Down, after all. A walk-through window seems like such an odd choice though. What's the purpose? To save you 15 extra steps? I mean, I used to live right near there, so I can say for a fact that this is not the cleanest McDonald's establishment, but still... it's not so bad that you need to stand outside at a window to get your food.

And apparently, people have actually been lining up outside for this thing. The counter is like... 15 steps away! GO INSIDE!

Nobody Likes a Stink Bomb

May 20th, 2010 by Chestykins Posted in Art Scene, Graffiti, New York City, Street Art | No Comments »

Obviously, it is the nature of street art to be impermanent - it is art born of vandalism and it will be vandalized.

In my opinion, however, there's a big difference between contributing to an existing piece, adding to it creatively, or even covering it (creatively) to make way for a new thought or idea, and obnoxiously spraying a bland tag over the entire thing.

People hate Shepard Fairey. They think he's a sell out, they think he's a plagarist, they think he's a hack. Whatever they think, they hate him for it and they're downright giddy when his stuff gets bombed. Sometime in the early morning hours of Sunday, May 15th, Fairey's These Parties Disgust Me mural, which was pasted up over a faux wall on Houston Street at the end of last month, was tagged.

It's not the first time someone has taken aim at the piece - before the pasting was even complete,  it had been tagged. A brick was tossed through it and a portion of it was kicked in before the artist's Mayday show opened on May 1st. With Fairey hoping to keep the mural relatively in tact until the show opening, the mural was repaired and cleaned soon after each incident, however, with the month almost over and the show's run coming to an end, the wall is now fair game to taggers and Shep haters alike.

I know why people don't like Shepard Fairey, but I don't really understand it, or the need to purposefully destroy his work. He's a commercial artist now, yes. Absolutely. He makes money, he sells work, and yes, his work is, more often than not, derivative of other people's or a reinterpreation of a photograph. I don't really see it as plagiarism, though. Plagiary, to me, would be him taking someone else's work outright, unaltered, pasting it up and calling it his own - that's really not what this guy does.

Fairey's work has a very definitive style to it. It's a combination of formats and looks and often speaks to an idea that the original work was not intended for. He's not tearing pages out of books and throwing them up on walls, he's creating something new from something existing. All art comes from somewhere or something else. How we see it is, of course, extremely subjective. For example: To me, all tags look generally the same. Bubble letters or graffiti scrawl. Thousands of tags and maybe.... 3-4 styles of actual tag. One could really make the argument that taggers are just copying each other over and over again and just swapping out names. It's not very artistic. It's nothing new or interesting. It doesn't take much thought.

The Mayday mural was a nice piece. Fairey himself said that he hoped it would remain there for some time and become a collaborative work, which could have been really cool. Throwing a huge, nasty looking tag over it, though... I just don't see the point, the artistry, or the statement in that. I could ramble about this for a long time, and I won't even get into what happened to the four NYC Banksy's, but my main point is mostly that it sucks to see something destroyed out of spite. Let it go, people.

Banksy in New York

May 18th, 2010 by Chestykins Posted in Art Scene, Brooklyn, Graffiti, New York City, Street Art | 1 Comment »

If you're into it, you've probably already heard, but anonymous and notorious street artist, Banksy, has finally landed in New York City. At least four new pieces have gone up in the past day or two, (3 in Manhattan and at least one in DUMBO). The one seen above is on Cedar St. at Trinity Place down in the Financial District. By the time I reached it, someone had already stickered a piece of it. Apparently it's been further vandalized over night, with someone scribbling white all over the figure. (Bastards.)

I haven't heard anything about the piece in DUMBO being hit, which is nice to know as it's pretty awesome. (See below.)

Other sightings have been reported in Chinatown and Soho. Happy hunting, fans!

*Update*: Spoke too soon re: the DUMBO Banksy. They've all been bombed. More on that soon.

Stunning time-lapse video of Eyjafjallajökull

May 18th, 2010 by Chestykins Posted in Video, World News | No Comments »

(aka. that volcano that held planes hostage for awhile.)

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

EMINEM NEW FREESTYLE – Despicable

April 27th, 2010 by The T Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

With the anticipation of his new album Relapse 2 Recovery ( June 22 ), Eminem releases a new Freestyle track called Despicable [Over + Beamer, Benz, or Bentley].

CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF. (at HipHopDX.com)

Finally the Eminem we know and love...  FAST, HARD, and ANGRY

Eminem is showing everyone that he still is one of the best rappers to ever grace this earth.

Also check out his first single  "Not Afraid" hitting the waves this FRIDAY. http://twitter.com/eminem