Welcome to NYC - the Large Apple. The Apple that you choke on when your name is not even Adam.  The Apple you covet when your eyes have forgotten Eve, and all her Sisters Of Mercy.  This is NYC 10 years ago.  This is when Jack was a Rabbit and you weren't tall enough to look out of your dad's boot-tops.  "Tastes like Brocolli to me, and I'm not even a Veg..."

It's circa 1996.

Men have gone to the moon, but they haven't bombed the WTC yet.  We're still virgins in our underwear, shopping in Malls, drinking coffee that's good if you don't inhale.

NYC is a dream like all others.

People with places to go, things to do.  Important things, not like us West-Coast Wander-Losts: walking for the sake of new garments.  Walking to talk to our friends on the transistors in our ears.

NYC is about Music and Art and Soul and the Get-Go inbetween the WannaBe's.  It's about making romance in a subway, eating Cauliflower in a Deli, being a Jew and an Arab in the distance it takes to sneeze; renouncing and announcing your human-hood in any variety of straight and gay ways before you get home to your matchbox.

NYC is about people looking you in the eye, to see what your eyes are made of.  People who walk in dreams and talk in streams and bathe in rivers of Yellow-Cab gold.

It's a place to be angry and naked.

A little Wall-Markin' goes a long way ...

in a city that forgot its Name.  So many names to name these streets, these homeless people, these dying Pidgeons, these stray cats...

What does it matter when you call Dust "clean" ...?

Who will look twice when you call coffee "tea"?

Names by any other name are just not names, they're pencil shavings in the wind.  They're failing grades on an old report card that bit the dust when Dad got home drunk again.

We're all from the same family, why does your brother's behaviour surprise you?

It's a Palace Of Movers; the Shakers of Salty Earth.

This little Latino's flexin' his biceps outside the Restaurant Auction Outlet, somewhere in Alphabet City if memory is still Alive in the MainFrame upstairs.

"SN" seems to claim some of these rather colorless and meaningless numbers on boarded up balconies.

Does anyone ever ask "why" ...?

So much more could be done for Humanity if Colors were added in places they're needed, not just new thorns in another stinky armpit.

Don't you EVER shave?

Don't you ever look in the mirror?

Harlem is Sacred Space, no matter which way you spell it.  It's seen too many lives boil over on a stove that's all Back-Burners.

But ..  Cool -- what else can be said?

Music was made to issue from the cracks in this Seam.  Steam was made to rise from the mouths of babes. 

Grow to die, sing to cry, hang your clothes out dirty one more time, dear City of Singers.

Joshua's Jumpin' Bean just jumped in.  Shall we stay for dinner?

JOB-'87 styled this rather cool throw up some 20 years ago.  If the paint is still warm, it's now buried under other City Trash.

It's a Dog-Eat-Dog kind of thing.

Our paint outlasts our heart valves 4:1.

Makes you wanna get up and dance without missing one more beat.

Harlem is a city of Hearty Beats; a city of Beaten Hearts.

The Queen of Spades is often known as "the Bitch"....

"This mural commemorates the spirt of our neighborhood.  The residents along west 107th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Ave.  A commitment to improving the quality of life on our block and in our community."

Nice Thought.

Good action.

What are the consequences?

And, last but not least, something to bless each and every Chinese Grocery in each and every Big American City.

The Name Taggers have be-smirched this innocent wall outside a pottery salon in NYC's steamy chinese district.  Use for noodles or haircut!

Who said Unisex was a crippled bicycle?

We're all flippin' slugs under the cover of night!

ON TO NEW YORK #2 ...