This is what happens on an average weekend afternoon in NYC
So I have been in NYC for the greater portion of my life and I have seen quite a few things throughout the years. Things that make you say, “WOW, this could only happen here, in NYC.”
Case in point, today’s social experiment on the 6 train headed uptown at around 4:30 pm brought to you by The Underwear Brigade. No really. There was some sort of happening that I swear must have included 250 plus people between the ages of 19 and 25. They got on a crowded subway, took off their pants in a methodical manner, hung out like it’s no biggie, and got off at the next stop to hang out on the platform with the rest of their pantless minions. Repeat process.
So here is how it started: I got on the 6 at Bleecker Street to get back home after meeting up with friends in Chinatown. It has been brutally cold so the only things I have been thinking about are the layers of clothing keeping me warm, and the comfort of my warm apartment. The train arrives and to be expected it is crowded. There is a bit of a buzz and the air in this moving sardine can clearly is charged. There were a few NYPD on the train as well. I notice that in the middle of the train there is a group of people undoing their shoes and/or slipping in and out of them. I use the usual NYC logic and good sense of not staring. Right? Wrong. They were totally taking their pants off, and I was totally staring, utterly transfixed. Yup. Standing around in tidy whities, Fruit of the Loom, Joe Boxer, you name it. Shirts, sweater, parkas remained. They then got off, and joined a growing number of their cohorts at every stops until 14th street where there was a platfrom full of people just standing around… in their johns. Like nothing. Talking. Maybe gonna get a Starbucks. Who knows.
The crowd thinned out and the only bit of entertainment left was some Borat looking guy in really tight Superman briefs. Gross. I had to do it though, I had to snap off a picture because really… when was this gonna happen anytime soon.
The whole experience lasted 10 minutes. In all honesty I was quite impressed with the sheer numbers of people involved, who for the most part did not know each other, and the efficency of execution. WOW. Thanks for that.
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- Step 2, execution
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- The gathering of the hinds
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- ?
Thats original!
Yo!
I definitely understand your frustration with who determines the relevance of art and therefore decides what is to be shown and where, BUT WHO IS TO DETERMINE?
In the end, it boils to to money as the means to have it exhibited in the institution or in public, or as the influence that gets it published etc.
Unfortunately, money=cultural relevance. and its not always shit. Often times it’s fuckin’ great!!
Who coined the term “modernism” or “abstract expression” etc.? Someone who was contextualizing its cultural relevance so they can sell it, or get the funding to have a traveling museum show etc.
Even the term “outsider art” makes those artists defined by it no longer “outsider,” because it’s a definition made up so someone can “sell” a show or artist, or contextualize it for themselves so they can buy it; owning a piece of the culture.
Yeah…we can all do our work and never have it seen and wait tables and eat shit and maybe not even work because we’re waiting tables and eating shit. Isn’t the goal to produce quality and hope to get a museum show yourself?
ack…yeah..there may be a lot of shit out there, but there’s also great stuff. and maybe some o’ the shit we just haven’t taken the time to understand the artists’ intent.
and by the way…I could be wrong, but that photo looks like it may be a Rauschenburg. I could wrong, but he was fuckin’ great.