Banksy’s penultimate NYC piece in the Bronx by Yankee Stadium is no more.
It only lasted a few days before someone painted over it.
The Bronx can be really harsh against outsiders who just waltz right in and tag up walls in the borough where graf went world wide.
Local resident William Casari, who sent the above image, said, “What a waste; another loss for the Bronx…”.
Although it is a shame that it was painted over, such is the life of graf. Here today, gone tomorrow. Funny thing is that had it been a Tats Cru or any other of our world renowned graf artists, it would still be there untouched for years to come.
Personally, I’m more upset about the loss of the wall below which was demolished to make way for a new development in Melrose.
Old Mural once in Melrose was demolished to make way for a new development.
Screen capture from http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/nyregion/a-colorful-food-lovers-feast-for-the-eyes-starring-flavors-of-the-bronx.html?h=bAQHxZMnD&s=1
Tomorrow at the historic Andrew Freedman Home, our culinary ambassador and New York Emmy Winner, Baron Ambrosia, will premier his movie, ‘The Baron Is Dead’ along with a concert by the legendary Grand Master Mele Mel.
Many of you know the Baron from his Bronx Flavor show on BronxNet which takes the viewer on the many gastronomical delights the Bronx has to offer. His zany antics makes the show far more entertaining than anything you’ll encounter on the Food Network.
His shows eventually caught the eyes of the Cooking Channel where Baron Ambrosia continues to take us on his incredible journeys.
In her article in the New York Times, Winnie Hu says:
“If New York City’s fine dining establishments live by Michelin stars and Zagat ratings, the myriad homegrown restaurants and shops of the Bronx have their own roving critic. Those that please the Baron’s palate are recommended to his fans and featured in his ever-expanding portfolio of media projects, which includes podcasts and two culinary-themed shows on the Cooking Channel and BronxNet, a local cable television network.”
Tomorrow night’s itinerary at the Andrew Freedman Home is as follows:
6:00 PM Market of Mysteries will open (CASH)
7:00 PM Black U.N. UN Concert
7:45 PM Vodou blessing
8:00 PM Film Screening
9:45 PM Grandmaster Mele Mel Concert Outdoor Event.
It seems Banksy couldn’t resist the lure of the Bronx and came back to throw up on a wall across from Yankee Stadium this time a big cat (a cheetah?) with what appears to be tags adorning its body.
Since you’ll be racing to the area, don’t forget to check out the very nearby Andrew Freedman Home for their latest exhibit,” Outside the Box”.
Screen capture from BAXNYC
Jeffrey Guard, founder of Bronx Art Exchange has this to say about the exhibition:
“Outside the Box” is filled with a fresh-frenetic-aggressive-Instagram sickness that no doubt will attract “cool hunters” from brands like Stüssy, Vans, and retailers like Urban Outfitters and Brooklyn Industries eager to hire these artists to design their showrooms for next season.
Lady K Fever has successfully captured the pulse of the street art scene that has come to capture the current art movement that is happening in the South Bronx. The exhibit was filled with far more youth than I have seen in a very long time (at any art opening) and is indicative of the fact that street art has already connected to the next generation in a way that I have not seen other art forms accomplish.
But hurry because the exhibit closes tomorrow, November 1st! Doors are open from Noon to 5pm.
Once you’re done there, you can do this tour in reverse and end up at the “Ghetto 4 Life” piece on East 153rd and Elton Avenue and in the process, soaking up more of what we’ve been doing and offering for decades.
This past Monday the German based international food market, Aldi, opened its fifth New York City store (and second Bronx location) in Melrose on 3rd Avenue in the former space occupied by Staples between 154th and 155th Streets.
Aldi promises deep discounts by simply switching to their own brands vs the costlier label of national brands and after looking at their prices it seems like local supermarkets are in for some serious competition.
I took their challenge and was easily won over as the quality of their products down to the ingredients are equal to if not better than the national brands on most occasions which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering that Trader Joe’s is owned by them.
To give you an idea of what you can expect to save, I compared the prices to the nearest Pioneer Supermarket just 3 blocks away and below is what I found.
Gallon of milk
Pioneer: $3.59
Aldi: $2.89
Silk Almond Milk
Pioneer: $3.99
Aldi ‘s brand: $2.49
64 Oz Florida’s Natural Orange Juice
Pioneer: $3.99
Aldi’s Brand: $2.29
Kelloggs Cornflakes 12oz
Pioneer: $4.19
Aldi’s Brand: $1.49 for 1.125lbs
Cheerios 15oz Box
Pioneer: $4.99
Aldi’s Brand: $1.69 (yes you read that correctly and I tried them with the almond milk and the taste was better.)
Apples (all varieties)
Pioneer: $1.79/lb
Aldi: $1.79 for a 3lb bag.
The above list is simply a fraction of what you’ll save by shopping at Aldi as they do carry hundreds of other common everyday items. Although
Although their produce selection is very limited, I am happy to say that the quality is definitely good with some organic choices to be had. A family easily get double to triple the amount of fruits and vegetables than they can at their local supermarkets.
You’re not going to necessarily find every single item (or rather the equivalent) you typically purchase at other stores but if you’re looking to save major bucks then you won’t mind coming in for what you CAN get at Aldi.
Don’t forget to bring your own bags as they do charge 11¢ per bag as part of how they are able to offer such great deals on their items.
Let us know your thoughts on Aldi, we’d really like to know! Are you a regular Aldi shopper at other locations? Let our local residents know your favorite items!
Oh and if you’re looking for employment, they’re having a hiring event this Friday from 9am until 2pm. Cashiers start at over $12/hour and store managers can make up to $80k / year.
Like the vast majority of Banksy lovers, you probably have never walked the streets of the Bronx let alone the South Bronx. You probably thought you’d never come up here too.
Well now that Melrose, the South Bronx and heck the rest of the borough has your attention (and it’s not even because of a Yankee game or the world series) we’d like to invite you not to rush back to the comfort zone of your own neighborhoods and typical haunts and explore this vibrant and very much culturally alive slice of New York City. Immaculate Conception Church on East 150th and Melrose has been serving Melrose since it was just a village and a part of Westchester County; the Bronx didn't even exist back then!
Once you’ve seen the Banksy, head over to Xochimilco on Melrose between 152nd and 153rd Streets just one block from the mural, one of the best Mexican restaurants in the Bronx. Xochimilco has become the go to spot for even the local Mexican population for some good, real home cooked meals.
If you’ve already been here then you know how easy the commute is and what a stone’s throw from Manhattan Melrose is located.
Most of you arrived at 3rd Ave and 149th Street via the 2 and 5 express trains and upon exiting the station, you probably didn’t know that you were standing at the busiest intersection outside of Times Square. Over 200,000 visitors walk by the Hub each day.
Melrose is also home to the ONLY certified LEED Neighborhood District in the State of New York thanks to the dozens of “green” developments that have been built here like Via Verde which is one of the country’s most talked about green developments in the country.
The first luxury boutique hotel recently opened here this summer at the old Bronx Opera House. The Opera House Hotel has quickly become a favorite destination for global visitors to our city looking for luxury accommodations at affordable prices while still remaining conveniently located from major tourist attractions.
If you come to the neighborhood don’t forget to visit the Bronx Documentary Center which is 3 blocks away from the Banksy. The BDC, as it’s affectionately known, is at 614 Courtlandt Avenue at the corner of East 151st Street. The Bronx Documentary Center
Currently at the Bronx Documentary Center you can view Gabriele Stabile’s first New York City show called ‘Refugee Hotel’ (open Thursdays & Fridays from 3PM to 7PM and Saturdays & Sundays from 1PM – 5PM until December 1st) which documents refugees’ arrival in America from their first few hours on US soil to a few years later after they settled in their final destinations across the country.
Make sure you sign the guest list at the BDC because each month you can always find screenings of award-winning documentaries followed by panel discussions. The Bronx Documentary Center has quickly become the place to be for the city’s photographers due to the quality of the work exhibited here as well as the intimacy of the space. There are also free photography classes on Friday!
From there, head south on Courtlandt and on 150th Street you can see a collaborative mural between several artists on the building housing Neighborhood Cycle.
Wanna see a Tats Cru mural? Walk another 2 blocks to East 148th Street between Courtlandt and Morris Avenues and you’ll come across two murals by some of the most recognized names in urban graf culture. There’s a wall by Tats Cru and right next to it you can view a collaboration between How & Nosm with Aryz. Tats Cru Mural Mural by How & Nosm With Aryz
After you’re done there turn on Morris Avenue and make a left onto 149th Street and head towards the Grand Concourse just another couple of blocks away.
There you will find 3 major cultural gems 2 of which are easily accessible. The first is the main Bronx Post Office right at the intersection. It is a landmark building currently for sale and inside the lobby you will see some of the best public works murals by Ben Shahn and his wife. The 13 murals are currently not landmarked but the community is working hard on it.
After you’re done at the post office you can head on south of 149th Street and on your left you will see the entrance to the Longwood Gallery at Hostos Community College. If the gallery isn’t open, at the very least you will be treated to the rotunda which is a gallery in and of itself. Hostos Community College
Head back north and West just another 3 blocks to Walton Avenue between 149th and 150th Streets you’ll find Pregones Theater which has been serving the community for over 30 years now and providing Puerto Rican And Latino based preforming arts.
Make sure to check out their website to see what’s going on and perhaps you can coordinate a trip up here with one of their performances.
So there you have just a small taste of what we have to offer in just one small slice of our beloved Bronx and I didn’t even get into that just ten blocks south into Mott Haven and Port Morris you have a thriving community of artists. I could have also gone further north along the Grand Concourse (which is its very own cultural and legendary icon with the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world) and within 10 blocks you would have hit the Bronx Museum of Art and the Andrew Freedman Home.
When you come to see “Ghetto 4 Life”, do yourself a favor and stick around and see what we have to offer. As always you can email me with any questions!
The absurdity in Melrose just increased a few notches. The building owner has installed a gate to cover and protect Banksy’s “Ghetto 4 Life” piece on East 153rd and Elton.
Here sits a really beautiful building vacant for decades – with the exception of ground floor commercial space – and rather than fix up the building for residential units, the landlord would spend the money to protect a Banksy.
I bet he wouldn’t have done it for a Tats Cru. Oh wait, that’s right. Because Tats Cru is respected and no one would deface it, you see, they’re part of our family here in the Bronx and not just some globetrotting individual who obviously has the financial means to do what he does.
Someone slapped this sticker right next to the Banksy on E 153rd and Elton in Melrose. It pretty much sums up how locals feel and yes they do know who Banksy is but having grown up in the heart of where graff was born, we tend to look at this as rather pedestrian.
Two weeks ago I was privileged enough to witness the opening night of what would be a week-long journey for 6 talented Latina artists – a few with strong Bronx ties – to a sold-out crowd on most nights.
‘Soledad Speaks‘ is self-described as “spoken word theater at its best,” but after coming to terms with what was presented, I find that too limiting.
The work is the brainchild of award-winning writer Linda Nieves-Powell who masterfully wove the words and talents of four poets and the choreography of one dancer, who’s works speak to your very essence, into a multidimensional and multifaceted introspective journey on identify particularly when looked through gender and racial biased lenses.
Through the intimacy of the small space at IATI Theater and the spoken word works of the four actresses, Nieves-Powell stirred powerful emotions, forcing us to ask questions and confront societal demons which we generally try not to deal with.
Soledad Speaks shows the viewer the effects of slavery and colonization on the women of Puerto Rico and how they perpetuate today but most importantly, the work is transcendent and speaks to all of us regardless of where we come from for the underlying message of acceptance is what you see here.
Meriam Rodriguez, Maria Rodriguez, Peggy Robles-Alvarado and J.F. Seary – together and separately – deliver a performance that comes from their own personal experiences so what you see is, raw and very real.
Through her choreography and dance, Milteri Tucker (Soledad) delivered a believable performance as an enslaved person who is kidnapped from her homeland and dragged thousands of miles across the ocean to foreign lands.
Tucker also delivered beautifully choreographed interludes as the rest of the cast is backstage prepping for the next scene.
In one scene, Milteri Tucker is poked, prodded and ridiculed for her ‘blackness’ as the 4 other cast members portray a “typical” day in a beauty salon where Latinas spend their hard earned money to wash away their heritage and conform to European edicts of standards of beauty.
‘Soledad Speaks’ is a must see and it is a shame that the show was only on for one week. The lessons taught during this performance and which the audience leaves with need to be part of a curriculum.
The many issues which the play deals with develop at a very young age and if we had our youth introduced to such plays as ‘Soledad Speaks’ we would be creating a brighter tomorrow.
The little girl with curly hair who’s bullied because of her strong, African features can walk with her head held high and proud of her ancestry rather than be ashamed of it.
The gay child who loves differently than what society says we should can continue to love without feeling bad or evil because of it
‘Soledad Speaks’ to each of us and forces us to be happy, proud and accept who we are.
Whenever major art exhibits come to the city, oftentimes the Bronx is not going to be a stop on the tour so it was to many Bronxites’ surprise when a Banksy appeared overnight in Melrose.
Well over a thousand fans flocked to our neighborhood to photograph the latest Banksy and take selfies with it.
They came from as far as Westchester or Brooklyn, the way the faithful flock to Our Lady of Lourdes in France.
Yesterday I expressed that I wasn’t quite sure how I felt for the piece and its tag of “Ghetto 4 Life”. I still think that of all words to use in his Bronx stop, ghetto may not have been the best choice but then again it’s Banksy and he does like to stir the pot.
Jeffrey Guard, founder and creative director of The Bronx Art Exchange had this to say on his website, “What Banksy, who is presumed to be both white and English, may not have realized is that in American culture, a white person using the word, “ghetto” can be perceived as racially charged, in that it suggests a not-so-subtle perjorative towards people of color meant to implicitly infer low-class, uneducated and criminal in nature. It’s analagous to people of color using the word “gentrify” as a racially charged perjoartive to subtley infer that white people are greedy, untrustworthy and lack a social conscience.”
Then you have my friend Karah Shaffer who was quoted in the Daily News saying, “It’s lazy and it’s ridiculous. Having a kid with spray paint and his butler writing ‘Ghetto 4 Life’ in the South Bronx is an easy way to perpetuate the way people think about the South Bronx…It’s disrespectful. Nobody comes here to be ‘ghetto,’”
But I’m not here to talk about the piece itself but more importantly the throngs who ran up to our home borough of the Bronx.
To many residents, they could not escape the dichotomy of thinking how cool it is that a world renowned artist left his mark in Melrose and the heart of the South Bronx and at the same time feel quite insulted that with decades of major street art, murals and our own homegrown and world-renowned graf artists it took an outsider to bring folks in.
Coming into the global ground zero of street art, graffiti, hip hop and urban culture to gape and awe at an outsider’s work makes me scratch my head and ask of them, “Where have you been? Why don’t you support your fellow urban brothers and sisters from the Bronx with such avidity.”
Perhaps that was Banksy’s intent, to poke fun of the folks who would otherwise never step into the neighborhood, and cast a light on cultural appropriation? To bring the sheep in to the most maligned borough and show the world it’s ok?
I live in a predominantly latino and African-American neighborhood so to see white people coming in by the hundreds throughout the day you can’t help but make that obvious observation.
Several individuals took offense that I saw it to be quite comical but they missed the entire point of my statement. I, in no way, shape or form am saying that a group of people shouldn’t come to the ‘hood to experience art, I am simply asking said group to think long and hard of why they never came before. Lynn Roberts, on Facebook, summed it up perfectly when a reader, who is white, found my comments disturbing. The reader couldn’t look beyond that I said ‘white’. Roberts went on to say:
“…the overwhelming majority of the white people who are flooding the hood just to see Banksy’s work would not venture there otherwise. I also doubt they are spending their money in local businesses while there. Your individual actions simply do not compensate for the hundreds of others who are otherwise disinterested in visiting “the hood.”…If you want art to be for all, then whose art are you talking about? Banksy gets paid big bucks for his knock-off “art” while the original artists in the hood have had to scratch to make a dollar and/or risk arrest.”
So if Banksy did something big in the South Bronx, it’s that he opened up an important dialogue between the locals and the outsiders. Many, myself included, challenged a number of the visitors to come back for some truly local artwork and see what we’ve been doing for decades before Banksy was a household name.
A number were eager to see more. Almost every single one had never been to the Bronx other than maybe Yankee Stadium or simply just driving through.
A few admitted that they were scared of coming up here having been brainwashed by the media and were pleasantly surprised to see that the Bronx was not this monster waiting to chew them up and spit them out.
Whether we like Banksy or his piece in Melrose doesn’t change the fact that it was an historic event
Woke up today and my block is abuzz as Banksy left his latest mark in the Melrose neighborhood of the Bronx.
Walked down the block to see his latest piece which has the tag “Ghetto 4 Life” which I still don’t know how I feel about it, however, my friend and neighbor
Karah Shaffer says it’s lazy and the tag does a disservice to the neighborhood.
My friend and neighbor, Karah Shaffer interviewed by Bronx News12
If you wanna catch it before it’s gone, come to East 153rd Street between Melrose and Elton Avenues less than a 5 minute walk from 3rd Ave and 149th Street Station on the 2 and 5 trains.
Update: I have mixed feelings about his choice of words…Ghetto 4 Life? What exactly is he saying here? Several residents have expressed similar concerns. Our neighborhood is filled with so much art and culture, murals and graff and no one really comes to experience it so it’s disappointing to see so many sheep flocking over because it’s supposedly “hip”.
Sometimes I like to change things up a bit and I’ll take a different route during my walks through my neighborhood and the Bronx.
In doing so I usually stumble upon the beauty that is right in my neighborhood waiting to be discovered.
Check out this mural done in collaboration with New York based Spanish graffiti duo How and Nosm and the Spanish graffiti and street artist Aryz who hails from Barcelona.
If you want to go check it out, it’s conveniently located on East 148th Street between Morris and Courtlandt Avenues.
