DANI STEELE is the photographer who took these incredibly photo's of Hugh and I, back in NYC, this day in particular we rode around town on our old stolen cruisers with fat balloon tires, my bike had tony the tiger hand grips, it was so cold that day, at the old art Pier just off of canal street, on the west side.
Hugh and i used to go in there and ride our bikes and look at all the free art, build ramps and jump our bikes, this ramp was built out of this amazing negative space painting, we ended up breaking both of our bikes.
We stole art and watched guys dressed up in Nazi uniforms make porn, witnessed men in business suits come swimming out of the Hudson river, shrug at us and walk to work.
the Pier was about the size of a football stadium, ten stories tall and filled with art, trash and monsters, the entrance was all office space from the forties and fifties, i guess, all sea foam green and glass paneled, each room had a little art installation, this was before Andy Warhol's death, but one of the rooms had a casket with a clear bubble lid and a corpse of Andy inside, the casket was surrounded by soup cans and real live grass growing in a carpeted ring.
the city demolished the building sometime later, destroying all the art work, but not these photo's, thank you Dani Steele.
Those are awesome photos. Very cool.
ReplyDeletewhat beautiful memories and swell snaps. your new york is thoroughly and utterly dead, agreed. more tourists populate the streets than actual residents and almost all traces of grit have been scrubbed off. i miss the fuck out of old ny.
ReplyDeleteweary1, I couldn't agree with you more. neil (and dani!), those are great pics. I especially dig the very-specific narrowness of both of your guys' jeans legs, 'twas the style back then, oh so memorably!
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