Panic! at the MTAWho is the “emo” tagger using actual, old-school spray paint?
ByTim Murphy
gossipmonger
Padma Leaves a Bad Taste in Fiamma’s MouthManhattan Moms, an East Coast equivalent of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County, will premiere early next year. A lot of the city’s foremost graffiti artists congregated for a book party at Auto in the meatpacking district. Billy Joel is in talks with the Mets to perform a bunch of gigs at Shea Stadium. George Steinbrenner will have a high school named after him in Tampa. Padma Lakshmi was rude to the staff at Soho eatery Fiamma, but Martha Stewart overtipped and was nice. CNN gave out an award to someone for forcing “one of the world’s largest oil corporations to pay more than $6 billion to clean up toxic waste in the Amazon rain forest,” but didn’t name Chevron as the company because they are an advertiser.
intel
Ellis Gallagher Will Make All Sidewalks Safe for Chalking Children AgainMeet Ellis Gallagher, Brooklynite and first non-child victim in the sidewalk-chalk war. Gallagher, who has been drawing silhouettes on the streets for the past three years (he’s been profiled in the Times and has lectured on graffiti as art at the Brooklyn Museum), was the city’s first chalk-related arrest last week when police saw him at work during the filming of a profile set to air in early November as part of Channel 13’s “New York Voices” series. “I’ve been stopped before, but once they see it’s chalk, they lay off,” Gallagher says. He was carted around to three different precincts and charged with making graffiti, possessing graffiti instruments, and making mischief before charges were dropped in Red Hook court the next day.
in other news
Park Slope Child Strikes Again
Natalie Shea, the Park Slope child whose neighbor called the fuzz on her when she tagged the sidewalk in front of her building last week, remains free, despite our efforts. And it appears that she still hasn’t learned her lesson. The Brooklyn Paper caught the little ruffian scribbling on the sidewalk again this week, and it looks like she was doing so with the encouragement of her parents. “We just think the whole thing is ridiculous, and we’re showing it,” Natalie’s mom, Jen Pepperman, told the paper, clearly high on the publicity they received last week after the paper’s original story was picked up by the BBC, among other news outlets. “This created more controversy than the Bush wiretapping,” said Natalie’s father, George Shea, who is described as a public-relations expert. (Christ. If he worked for us, we would fire him immediately for saying something so totally Brooklyn-y.) But exactly how far are the Pepperman-Sheas (Christ. The ‘Pepperman-Sheas.’) willing to go with their stand against The Man? They have one more week to respond to their letter from the city asking them to remove the graffiti before they get slapped with a $300 fine. Will they remove the graffiti and risk being fined? And then, will they pay the fine or let their daughter go to the pokey? If it’s the latter, we suggest little Natalie watch out for Foxy Brown. She doesn’t take any shit, we heard.
Defiant Tot: I’ll Tag Again [Brooklyn Paper]
Earlier: Sidewalk Chalking Is a Gateway Crime
the follow-up
Is This the Splasher?Earlier this month, New York’s Sam Anderson looked at the curious case of the Splasher, the anonymous vandal who was destroying some of the city’s best “street art” — that’s a highfalutin term for fancy graffiti — with aggressive splashes of paint and wheatpasted pseudo-Marxist posters decrying the creeping gentrification of the street-art scene. Anderson talked to lots of prominent street artists, a number of the Splasher’s victims, and several potential Splashers. He never quite fingered the true Splasher, but he ended the piece with a strong candidate: an anti-capitalist named Zac. The other day, the city blog Gothamist — run by Jake Dobkin, one of Anderson’s first suspects — received a Unibomber-like manifesto from the Splasher, and subsequently fingered the bad guy as one Zach Dempster. We’d explain more, but, frankly, it all confuses us.
The Splasher Speaks [Gothamist]
the morning line
American Graffiti
• The City Council has approved — 49-0 — a symbolic ban on the N-word; the ban carries no penalties but already seems to be in effect, seeing that not a single publication covering it can bring itself to print the slur. [Newsday]
• And on the same day, a man pleaded guilty to scrawling “anti-Semitic slurs” — also unspecified — on cars parked near a Queens synagogue. City Council, get bannin’! [amNY]
• The Splasher, an anonymous culprit who defaces street art with violent handfuls of paint, has earned a chin-scratching Times profile. As expected, at issue is the line between “respectable” graffiti (Banksy, Swoon) and Splasher’s vandalism. Or is it art? [NYT]
• OMG Madonna’s collection at H&M! We’re more than a little perplexed why this is front-page material to the Daily News, so feel free to point out some sort of Mort-Madonna link we’ve accidentally missed. [NYDN]
• And in a particularly bizarre round of Mad Libs, a 46-year-old dominatrix … was busted for weapons possession … in a $3 million Bedford Hills mansion … owned by an Orthodox rabbinical school. [NYP]
the morning line
Lurid, Infected, Leering
• A gruesome murder-suicide in Brooklyn left four dead and almost redefines “lurid.” Investigators believe an ex-con bludgeoned to death his girlfriend (who was also his half-sister), killed her two children, then overdosed on the scene. [WNBC]
• A former NY1 reporter says she was sexually harassed at work and fired for complaining about it. Among other things, a colleague Photoshopped giant breasts on her photo, which apparently passes for a joke at NY1. [NYP]
• E. coli is here! The first registered NYC patient (who has already recovered) is a Staten Islander who got the bug, like the other 60 victims, by eating at a local Taco Bell. [amNY]
• The Daily News is shocked to learn that about 70 percent of recent subway graffiti has been made by European kids looking for an “authentic” NYC experience. Next they’ll tell us those guys on Astor Place are not real punks. [NYDN]
• And the Times ponders the rise of “experiential marketing” in Times Square, wherein companies do something moderately freaky and hope tourists will photograph it and/or blog about it. Here at Daily Intel, we would never fall for such gimmicks. [NYT]
the morning line
The Inexplicables
• Mayor Bloomberg seems to be making all the right moves in the wake of the 50-bullet NYPD hailstorm that killed an unarmed man in Queens. The mayor called the shooting “unacceptable or inexplicable” during a meeting with the city’s black leaders (including Al Sharpton and Charlie Rangel) — unusually strong language considering that all the facts aren’t officially in yet. [NYT]
• Firefighters doused a fire in the basement of a Bed-Stuy apartment only to find a man’s body duct-taped to a bed. It’s unclear whether the flame killed the victim or was intended to hide the crime. [WNBC]
• Even the most radical proponents of graffiti-as-legit-art would have a hard time defending one Patrick McCormick, whose fifteen arrests alternate between graffiti offenses (his artless tag, seen all over town, is “MAP”) and things like robberies and the murder of homeless people. He is now back behind bars after pleading guilty to a relatively mild crime of smashing a subway window with a hammer. What a guy. [NYDN]
• In Trenton, the heirs of a wealthy couple that donated $35 million to Princeton in 1961 want the money back. Their reasoning hinges on a claim, which they’re taking to court, that the university is misusing the endowment. It’s safe to say there goes that honorary degree. [NYP]
• And the Whitney is jumping on the High Line: The museum has inked a tentative deal with the city to build a downtown expansion that will also function as the entrance to the trippy park. This appears to mean that all talk of expanding its uptown space is now officially over, and the meatpacking district has ornery UES landmarks boards to thank. [amNY]
