www.laurenbesser.com 

this is my new website

parade

what a day it was for the west indian day parade this weekend.

brooklynite party

new shots from crown heights and bushwick

courtney love

New Shots from Brooklyn

Specter - Brooklyn, NY - August 2010

Faile - Brooklyn, NY - August 2010

Labrona and Dude Company - Brooklyn, NY - August 2010

Paste-up - Brooklyn, NY - August 2010

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Block Party Maze

It's block party season in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. Driving between the two is literally a maze of one-way streets and folks kickin' it. No warning comes before major thoroughfares are closed off by jumpy castles.  Massive lines of SUVs are forced to snake down small streets. Just when you find a short cut and build a little momentum, you're rerouted by caution tape between two folding chairs. 

The beauty of it is mighty. Most of the celebrations are unsanctioned, just neighbors deciding on a date and stopping traffic with flimsy blockades or parked mini-vans. Kids run through fire hydrants, men watch smokers cook meat,  stoops are full of yapping teens, friends call across the street with raised hands. What it is, is community and there might as well be rainbows it's so damn great. 

Yes. There are people fuming in standing traffic. Lots of complaints fire about being late or hungry or hot, but somehow it seems worth it. Like a little bit of communal debt payoff. Some sort of metropolitic karma we pay as city dwellers.

Really it's a gift.  It's a moment to revel in the last days of summer when you can't believe there haven't been block parties the whole time. So, the time has come to use up Fourth of July's cast-away fireworks, and I know it's hot out there, but if you roll down the windows you can hear the gospel choir soaring. 

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Grizzley Bear and Beach House play the Williamsburg Waterfront on Examiner.com

Catch my latest piece Grizzly Bear and Beach House play the Williamsburg Waterfront on Examiner.com. It's the show to catch this summer in Brooklyn.

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NohJColey in Williamsburg

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Javelin and Warpaint play The Whitney Museum on Examiner.com

 Read my newest post Javelin and Warpaint play The Whitney Museum in Examiner.com.
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fav shi shots 1

sace

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http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/dash-snow-new-york-artist-dies-at-27/?hp
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http://senseslost.com/2009/07/14/dash-snow-sace-rip/ to see some of his old tags.
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http://nymag.com/arts/art/profiles/26288/ ny mag article that made him famous.

black keys

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Fresh food grows in Brooklyn

Folks in Bed-Stuy are fighting to keep their farm. Bed-Stuy Farm, once a neighborhood garbage dump, was transformed into an urban oasis that produces over 7,000 lbs of fresh food every year, helping feed more than 4,000 people a month through the Brooklyn Rescue Mission.

The Farm is a source of community pride that has inspired neighborhood greening, backyard food gardening and food pantry agriculture projects. Now, the project is threatened by development . To get a good look at what they're up against watch The Garden. The Oscar-nominated film tells a similar story in South Central, Los Angeles. 

Check out Kerry Truman's post  about Bed-Stuy Farm to learn more and help save the Brooklyn farm by signing this petition because everybody from the penthouse to the projects deserves fresh, affordable grub. 

Bed-Stuy Farm opened the Malcolm X Farmer's Market July 10th and keep it running through early November. 

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rural graffiti

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festival at night/cali gardens

beruit and the Guggenheim

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Specter Canner Tribute Sculptures

Specter says the elegance and determination demonstrated by street collectors is an integral part of our city. His new project, "Canner Tribute Sculptures," is aimed at the workers to honor the art in their craft and themselves.

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new museum

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new Shots

outer Boroughs on Film: Brooklyn

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Anthology film presents Outer Bourough's on Film.

Breathless... (the movie)

Breathless  -  San Francisco, CA  -  June 2009

Jean-Luc Godard's 1961 debut feature, Breathless, is among the premiere films of the French New Wave.  It was shot entirely with a hand-held camera and Godard had no permission to shoot on any of the film's Paris locations. The film is full of the exciting angst of the early 1960's when revolution seemed imminent and heady ramblings ruled young discourse. 

Jean-Paul (Michel Poiccard) is a Bogart-obsessed thief full of bravado. Jean (Patricia Franchini) is the American beauty he can't shake. Both harbor some deep questioning driven by innocence turning to experience. 

We caught the 50th Anniversary Restoration last night at Film Forum. The theater started in 1970 as a screening room for independent films. Now it's the only non-profit cinema in New York City. Their three screens are dedicated to American independent and foreign art films, but classics, genre works, festivals and directors’ retrospectives claim the screens from time to time.

Breathless is beautiful and perfect in every way. I want to watch it in that hole-in-the-wall theater a thousand times. 

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miranda July

floodtide Premiere with Dark Dark Dark

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independence Photos

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On Lewis and Quincy - Brooklyn, NY - June 2010

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like a secret garden

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Music on the 4th in Examiner.com

Read my post Music on the 4th: She & Him at Governor's Island in Examiner.com about M.Ward and Zooey Deschanel's upcoming free show.
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second-hand music

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the fill-in-the-blank wall

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west bank graffiti

jerusalem graffiti

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work in VenusZine

Read my review of the fabulous Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work in VenusZine and then watch it. 

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the Autobiography of Malcolm X

shipwreck graveyard

Rethink Resale - Chicago

Andersonville Brown Elephant - Chicago, IL - August 2009

Salvation Army resale shops are not an option for donating or thrifting. It's sort of like Wal-Mart. But as a private non-profit the fundamentalist Christian organization can be blatant about their discrimination. The EEOC sued Salvy's in 2007 over their English-only policy when two Latinas were fired in Boston for speaking Spanish on the job. 

  And salvationarmy.org has the organizations positional statements outlining their conservative standpoints on everything from social drinks to "same-sex relationships that are genitally expressed" (a description that is hands down the best synonym for homosexuality I've ever heard). If you're wondering the answer is no, you are not invited to be a gay soldier in the Salvation Army. So it's more like Wal-Mar meets The Boy Scouts. 

I know. The glory of a day spent in musky warehouse thrift aisles is as sweet as a sunset. It doesn't get much better than dropping five bucks on fifty records or finding the perfect dinette for your first dinner party. But the sad truth is that most of these goldmines benefit right-wing organizations with radical Christian priorities. So what to do when in need of fingertips dirtied from too  many dirty flannels?

If you're in Chicago shop The Brown Elephant! It's one of those places that makes the world a better place. The kind of spot you leave feeling great not just because you donated a couple lamps and a broken turntable, but because you copped some free neon condoms on your way out. The three Brown Elephant locations (Andersonville, Lakeview and Oak Park) benefit Howard Brown Health Center one of the country's largest LGBT organizations. They provide free HIV testing, hospice care, cancer screening for lesbians, job placement for homeless teens and a slew of other needed services. 

The resale shops offer pick up services to make donating easy as pie and because hip progressives make the effort to drop cast-offs there the selection is stellar. We're talking shelves and shelves of wicked books sold for a buck fifty a piece, bins of Granny-somebody's ill jewelry, and of course, row after row of faded tees worthy of your next fit. Get there.

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Faile in Brooklyn

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Ludo Visits

Parisian street artist, Ludo, is in Brooklyn this week and dropped a bunch of posters and these three big pieces fom his Nature's Revenge project. 

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New Shots from Brooklyn

Lowride on Wythe - Brooklyn, NY - May 2010

Mr. Graceful - Brooklyn, NY - May 2010

Roa Permission Bunny - Brooklyn, NY - May 2010

Single-family homes - Brooklyn, NY - May 2010

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the Artist is Present: On the Streets

I was squatting on Broadway under the elevated tracks that make me think of chicago taking the picture above.

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the Artist is Present: Sitting with Marina Abramović

 Sitting with Marina (webcam shot by Dimitri Chrysanthopoulos) - New York, NY - May 2010
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Wellington Court Mural Project

Wellington Court Mural Project is underway in Astoria. Residents got sick of making calls to the city about removing the ever-steady tags covering big neighborhood warehouses. Then Ad Hoc stepped in with all the right resources. Now, the community is evolving into a public art destination in Queens. Nice.

Cern - Queens, New York - May 2010

Flower Guy, Swoon/Gaia, Royce Bannan - Queens, New York - May 2010

Chris Stain - Queens, New York - May 2010

Wellington Court - Queens, New York - May 2010

Wellington Ct - Queens, New York - May 2010

Gaia - Queens, New York - May 2010

M-City - Queens, New York - May 2010

Dan Witz - Queens, New York - May 2010

Ron English - Queens, New York - May 2010

  -- Making a very clever move, this guy jockey'd the project kick-off with nearby paste-ups.

Wellington Court Jockey - Queens, New York - May 2010

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