d corporation ®

Everyone’s favorite graf girl is back home.

It’s official: Danielle Bremner aka Utah, is finally a free woman, after sitting down for a 6 month bid on Rikers followed by an additional sixer in Boston. Debt to society now served and free to admit that she is indeed the infamous daredevil that has adorned the world’s trains and walls over the last 10 years, the 27 year old student and artist is ready to take on the internetz with her new blog.

Just so you know, I am lucky enough to call her a friend and got to catch up with the very pretty, petite, and unusually chipper young lass, who was kind enough to grant an interview. That and more after the jump…
If you’ve never heard of Utah, either you know nothing about graffiti, don’t read the paper, or live in a cave in Williamsburg. Her arrests and subsequent court appearances produced numerous write-ups in the media in the last couple years – the vast majority of which have painted her and partner/boyfriend Ether as a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. But there’s more than that – Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks for riches, Utah and Ether painted cities all over the world for nothing more than the satisfaction of getting over and leaving with a nice photo of their work. Being that nowadays risk for anything but monetary reward is pretty unheard of, Utah stands to remind us that self-satifaction can still be found elsewhere, and that somethings are worth doing just to do them…

What year did you start and what made you start writing graffiti?

Growing up in NYC, I was surrounded by graffiti from an early age. As a kid I was somewhat fascinated with it, wondering who did it and how they did it, but it never occurred to me as something I could do myself. I didn’t start writing until way later, around 2000/2001. At the time, I was hanging out with a few kids who wrote, and I would always go along with them on missions. They would paint while I would take photos and explore. I did that for a while, without ever picking up a can. After getting into a few chases, and realizing that I would be arrested and charged the same as everyone else, I figured I might as well join in on the fun and write my name too.
What are your major influences?

Early Americana. Hunter S Thompson. The first season of Twin Peaks. Oh, and Pokemon.

Why the name Utah?
I guess I just liked the letters. I know, you were probably hoping for some really witty and intelligent reason why. It’s kinda an unusual name, so I can see why people think there’s a story behind it. But nope, it really is just random.

Any favorite partners?

At this point, I only chill with crew members, or by myself.

Favorite brand of paint?

I’ll use it all. I’m not a paint snob. If I can use it to write my name on something, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do, regardless of the name on the label.
Is it easier to get over in the States, Europe or Asia?
It’s really all the same. I think it has more to do with who you are rather than where you are.

How many times were you caught in your career?

Surprisingly few, considering it’s something I’ve done almost every single day of my life for the past 10 years.
Being a woman was an advantage or disadvantage? (Sorry, had to ask)

It is what it is. Its a non-issue for me.
How was the case built? What kind of evidence? What was used against you and how was it linked?

My lawyer has some very interesting paperwork, that’s for sure!

“What if” sucks- but what would you have done differently both as an active writer (pre-arrest) and for your defense?

I have always had a pretty strict policy of not having regrets. To me, there is nothing more unattractive than someone who lives in a world of “should haves” and “what ifs”. It might sound kinda corny to say that I am really happy with myself and my life, but I am. Be it good or bad, I believe that experience is what makes a person who they are. I’ve definitely had more than my fair share of both good and bad experiences, but hey, at least it’s never boring.

Tell us about jail?

Jail isn’t great by any means, but really not that terrible either. It’s just the biggest waste of time ever. It’s like hitting a giant pause button on your life. Basically you have a whole bunch of time, and its kinda up to you how you’re gonna use it. You can relax, reflect on things and come up with a game plan, or you can sit around being angry and sad that you are in jail. I dunno, I think there are enough crybabies in the world already, don’t you? New York vs Boston?
Each had its pro’s and con’s. At the end of the day, jail is jail. None of it is particularly ideal.
Did you have friends? Have to join a clique inside?

I was super cool with everyone I met in jail. It wasn’t cliquey like how its portrayed in movies or television dramas. Basically, its a bunch of grown women hanging out all day in their pajamas, reading Cosmo and watching Law & Order SVU. Its not like anyone can go anywhere. You all are pretty much stuck together, and it’s in everyone’s interest to make the best of that. I mean, for sure there are disputes, and if you go into a scenario like that looking for a fight, you’ll have no trouble finding one. For the most part though, everyone’s just trying to do their time and go home.

Wait, you guys watched law shows in jail? Kinda ironic, no?
Oh my gosh, pretty much all we watched were law shows. Most of the time they were the only thing everyone could agree on to watch. I am pretty sure I have seen every single episode of Criminal Minds at least 5 times now. Law & Order, The First 48, Cold Case, CSI, NCIS, Americas Most Wanted, the list goes on. Except for Monday nights. That when we all watched The Bachelor.

Being a vegan is truly difficult in the outside world – how did you survive on jail food?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that I probably never want to see a pack of Ramen noodles again.

How did you spend your time?

I slept. A lot. Like, 18 hours a day a lot. Seriously, when else in my adult life am I going to have the chance the sleep until 4:30 in the afternoon. I figured I might as well take advantage of being away from my day-to-day responsibilities. Other than that, I read a whole bunch and traded drawings to people. In jail, once people find out you can draw, you’re pretty much set. Everyone wanted a drawing, so I kept myself busy sketching out names of people’s kids and baby daddy’s and whatnot. Lots of people asked me to draw them up tattoos. I don’t tattoo, but I can draw. And judging by some of the tattoos people had in there, I figured whatever I designed would probably be a whole lot better than what they were getting on the street. I drew the line at designing anything Tribal though.
Oh yeah, and there was a treadmill and exercise bike in Boston, so I was getting my fitness on.

What are the major flaws in the penal system?

Haha, oh gosh, what isn’t flawed about the penal system? That would certainly be a shorter list. Basically take the most simple, everyday situation you can think of and then picture handling it in the most backwards, inefficient way ever. Now times that by 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Yeah.
What was the most interesting thing you learned in jail?
How to make a lighter out of a double A battery and a piece of wire. I don’t smoke at all so its not like i really need a lighter for anything. But just knowing that I could construct one, if I ever wanted to, makes me feel super crafty. Kinda like that guy on Man vs Wild.

How do you feel about graffiti now?

Um, I think it’s awesome! Wait, is that the wrong answer…darn, a year in jail, and I still cant get it right…
Seriously though, I don’t feel any differently about it than I did before. Which is to say I don’t really feel any way about it, beyond that it’s a super fun thing to do. I never really sat around and analyzed the significance of graffiti, and I have no plans on starting to do it now. To me, graffiti is something you go out and do, not something you hang out and ponder the greater socioeconomic meanings of. Its funny, with my case being in the media so much, it seems that everyone has come out of the woodwork with some sort of opinion about graffiti. It for sure amuses me to have made everyone think so much about something I give so little thought too.

Was it worth doing a year bid?

That’s a good question.

What are your plans now?
Everything has been crazy-busy lately. I’m in school full time, which doesn’t leave time for much else. The few free moments I have are usually spent concentrating on my artwork. I just finished a canvas for the T.A.G Les Lettres de Noblesse auction at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris on February 15th. The proceeds go to a racism prevention organization, which I think is pretty cool. I have some group exhibitions coming up later in the year, so I’ve been hard at work preparing for those. I’ve also been working on finishing up the layout for my book, and focusing on my new website, utahoner.com. Yeah, after all these years of holding out, I’ve finally joined the interweb. I figured it’s a good way to let folks everywhere know what I’ve been up too, especially since pretty much all of the exhibitions I participate in are overseas. People can go to the website to see my artwork, and read the blog to find out what shows and events I have coming up. I’m also working on setting up a store, it should be up and running in the next few months. There will be limited edition prints, cool gear for the cool kids, and even some original artwork.

(Via Blogue)

The official statement from El-P …

Dear Inter-web, fans, friends and JUX family,

People keep asking me what’s up with JUX. There’s been some talk, there have been some rumors. Some half true, some way off. Reports of our demise have been mildly exaggerated. Here’s what it really all boils down to:

This year, a decade after starting DEF JUX and after overseeing the releases of some incredible albums including the forthcoming release of my dear late and great friend Camu Tao’s brilliant “KING OF HEARTS” LP, I’m stepping away from my duties as artistic director for the label to concentrate on what I love most: being a producer and an artist full time. This is something I’ve been contemplating for a few years now, and can’t think of a better time or, with the eventual release of Camu’s record, a more poetic way to transition into a new direction.

This means change for JUX. Of course we’ll still have our website, we will still sell our catalog, merch and more as well as bring you news and updates on all our projects and artists. We will be releasing “KING OF HEARTS”, a DEF JUX remix compilation, a 10 year anniversary retrospective and some other goodies. But then as a traditional record label DEF JUX will effectively be put on hiatus. We are not closing, but we are changing. The process is already underway, and the last several months (for those wondering what the hell we’ve been up to) have been spent dealing with the technical aspects of wrapping up the label in it’s current form and re-imagining our collective and individual futures.

In 2000 starting a traditional record label made a lot of sense. But now, in 2010, less so and I find myself yearning for something else to put my energy into. I also see newer, smarter, more interesting things on the horizon for the way art and commerce intersect, and as an artist and an entrepreneur, I’m eager to see them unfold. The evolution of this industry is, in my opinion, exciting, inevitable and it would be nice to see the DEFINITIVE JUX brand be a part of it. In other words, maybe we can turn this hoopty in to a hovercraft.

All business aside, and regardless of what form JUX may inevitably take, my focus for the immediate future is going to be back-to-basics. The fun stuff: sitting in the studio and immersing myself in music, performing it for for my fans when the time comes and whatever (or wherever) else might be out there creatively for me. Thats how it all started and that’s how the next phase will begin. The days of me dedicating the majority of my time and energy into providing JUX with a constant stream of physical releases from multiple artists are on hold for the time being. My heart (and what little common sense I possess) is telling me to simplify my focus and it has always been my policy to listen to my heart.

Truly, DEF JUX has been amazing to be a part of. So many good people. So much fun. I feel very lucky to be friends and collaborators with people who have affected and continue to affect my life and work deeply and indelibly. Working with the likes of Amaechi Uzoigwe, Jesse Ferguson, Jason Drake, and Katy Eustis at JUX as well as allies like Kathryn Frazier (biz3), Michael Bull and Lisa Socransky-Austin (to name only a few) has been incredible. These are people who worked for generally meager wages because they loved what they did and they believed in the artists and the idea of DEF JUX. Anyone would be lucky to have worked with even one person as dedicated and passionate as all of them are. They are true champions of indie music and they (and too many others to mention here) have my gratitude and loyalty forever.

None of it would have existed, though, if not for the artists. Artists who rolled the dice on us the same way we did on them, and were there with us as we battled it all out. CAMU, MR LIF, AESOP ROCK, MURS, CAGE, ROB SONIC, HANGAR 18, CHIN CHIN, CANNIBAL OX, THE PERCEPTIONISTS, RJD2, DESPOT, SA SMASH, YAK BALLZ, CRAYZ, THE MIGHTY UNDERDOGS, DIZZEE RASCAL, DEL, P.F.A.C, ACTIVATOR, COOL CALM PETE … the list goes on. I consider them all geniuses at what they do. Every victory that they have had and will have will always feel like a victory for myself and all of us at JUX. It’s been a joy to create and even struggle with them all. It has not always been easy, but it’s almost always been fulfilling. I only hope the work we put in together helped build a path to their collective futures. They have my sincerest well wishes and genuine respect.

Lastly and most importantly are the fans… holy shit THE FANS! Our fans are no joke. I can’t tell you how humbled I am to have felt the love and respect that they have shown us all. Even when we did things they didn’t like, they stuck around. This was their label as much as ours. We answered to them, and yet they respected that we did what we loved, nothing more and nothing less. We always will. You are why we do any of this, and I’ll never be able to express how much your support means to all of us. I think I speak for all of us Jukies when I say I love making music for you and can’t wait to make more.

Until then, on behalf of everyone here at JUX and from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

EL-P
Founder/Artistic Director/Recording Artist
DEFINITIVE JUX

A few of joints from the label …

My boy Bill originally put me onto Def Jux shit back in my high school days, I gotta admit I was not feeling Aesop at first and this kid would always blast his tunes in the ride, but it grew on me … Can Ox and C-Rayz was my shit from the beginning. I remember checking a free Def Jux showcase at the Union Square Virgin Megastore in the summer of ’04 and the next year we saw C-Rayz and Can Ox at North 6th in BK. Feels like it was a lifetime ago. The venue’s renamed, that store doesn’t exist anymore and the label’s shutdown now, haven’t linked up with that kid in years, it all moves on.

I’m always interested in lists like this … haven’t caught a lot of these films either.

BFI Sight & Sounds Films of the Decade

The hole I was digging was about three feet deep and halfway under the wall when I ran into a tarpaulin imbedded in the dirt. It caught at my shovel strangely, and I couldn’t tell what I’d run into in the nighttime darkness until I took out my flashlight. I knelt down next to the hole to see.

The beam of my flashlight showed the dirty blue plastic and then, as I prodded it with the shovel, I saw a half-rotten shoe sticking out of the worm-infested folds. A dead body. The idea filled my mind with a sudden wave of revulsion and horror. For a moment I couldn’t move. Then I reached out and slowly pulled on a corner of the tarp. The shoe tumbled out, attached to nothing, and behind it there was only dirt.

I let out a breath that I hadn’t known I was holding and sagged against the handle of the shovel. My moment of panic was over but my heart was still racing. I didn’t want to keep digging by myself, and so I walked over to the stairs leading into the next terrace of the park and waited for my friend Elinor to get back from her cigarette run. When she returned, she sat down with me and we both smoked a Camel before starting to dig again.

We were in Riverside Park, and the only light came from a crescent moon and from the occasional passing car on the West Side Highway. In the darkness there was nothing visible but the stunted grass of the field, and beyond that the leafless trees were outlined against the clouds that moved raggedly across the October sky. As we returned to our surreptitious nocturnal digging, I felt like a grave-robber in a horror story.

Next to us, the 15-foot stone wall leading to the next terrace of the park was a dark mass, the light barely enough to make out its texture. We kept our flashlights off as we dug so as not to be seen—though it was unlikely anyone else would be in this desolate area in the middle of the night.

We were trying to get into the West Side Line tunnel, a two-and-a-half-mile long tunnel that runs underneath Riverside Park from 72nd Street to 123rd Street. The tunnel was created in the 1930s when an existing line—the New York Central Railroad’s West Side Line, that dated back to 1849—was lowered beneath ground level and covered over. The line was abandoned in 1982 and the massive subterranean space was taken over by a community of homeless New Yorkers who were quickly dubbed the “Mole People.” The squatters built plywood shacks and wired in electricity from streetlights on the surface; water for drinking and washing came from Riverside Park’s public bathrooms or occasionally from tapping into pipes that ran close to the tunnel’s walls. Then Amtrak acquired rights to the tunnel; they kicked everyone out, bulldozed the shacks, and began running trains again in 1991.

From what I had read—researching in old newspaper articles, and the few books that mentioned the tunnel in recent decades—it seemed like the last of the mole people were gone by 1995. I hadn’t been able to find any information about the tunnel since then, though. I was intrigued; I wanted to see it. I wanted to see what traces of the one-time community remained, and I wanted to know—is anyone still down there?

One of the newspaper articles had mentioned that, during the heyday of the underground community, the residents who lived close to the center of the tunnel had created new entrances by digging underneath a retaining wall in the park. When the Parks Department found these holes, they would fill them in, but the mole people just dug new ones the next day, according to the article. It sounded easy and quick, as if it was just necessary to clear some dirt from under the wall to make a space big enough to slip through. We’d even found a place where the ground looked like it had been dug up and replaced, assuming that it would be easier to dig through the site of an old, filled-in tunnel than through undisturbed ground. But we had already been digging for more than two hours, hacking through the rocky earth, and when we finally reached the bottom of the wall, we found it was solid concrete at least two feet thick. We would have to actually tunnel underneath it. Even without the tarp slowing down our progress, it was clear we’d be digging for a while longer before we could get all the way under the wall.

Later, I would find out how foolish our labor was—there are far easier ways in at the ends of the tunnel, although there is no entrance within a mile of where we dug that night. Now that I’m more experienced, I’ll usually look at current and old city maps, review satellite images, and walk at least some of the route on the surface when I’m trying to get into a new tunnel. But this was the first city tunnel I had tried to get into, and at the time it seemed reasonable that I would have to dig my way into something underground.

Eventually, I had dug out enough that I could reach through and feel empty space. We cleared out a little more dirt so we could squeeze our bodies through. I put my flashlight in my mouth, and then pushed myself headfirst down and into the hole. It was a tremendously awkward entrance. I pushed with my elbows, scraped my ribs, got dirt and trash down my shirt collar, and even thought I was stuck for a moment, but eventually I was through.

I stood up with the eerie sensation that I get when I go from a warm sunny day into the dim, hushed coolness of a cathedral. At first it seemed that the space just stretched on forever around me. Even when I realized it wasn’t infinite, I could still see that it was very, very big. My flashlight beam barely showed the far wall, a little over 60 feet away. The tunnel is about 30 feet high, and I was standing in a sort of concrete compartment built about two-thirds of the way up one wall. It was about five feet deep and twelve feet long, bordered at each end by massive rusty I-beams that support the roof. The top of the tunnel is wider than the bottom, like the cap of a mushroom, and we had dug underneath the edge of that outer cap; the compartment I was in is basically the dead space where the top section fits over the main structure of the tunnel. If I were to sit or lie down, I realized, I’d be invisible from the track level, making it a perfect little bedroom niche. I’d already felt that there was debris under my feet, and now I looked and saw that I was standing on the rotting remnants of a long-ago squatter’s life: mouldering shoes, clothes, damp and blackened books, bottles and cans, more shoes, and something that was once a blanket, everything mixed together into the disgusting strata of a landfill and so damaged by water and time that all the items were now the same shade of a fetid dark gray. The tarp and shoe that had so frightened me earlier had been part of this mass of garbage.

Elinor kicked her way through our little hole. She brushed ineffectually at the dirt smeared into her shirt. After crawling through the trash and dirt, I felt like I was covered with crushed worms and spiders too, but no matter; we were in.

Elinor got out the cigarettes as she stared around and I reached for one. As I smoked I looked down at the floor of the tunnel below; we might be able to drop down without hurting ourselves, but I couldn’t see how we could climb back up. It was fifteen feet or more, and the smooth concrete wall offered no holds.

“How the hell can we get down?” I said, wishing we’d thought to bring a rope. Elinor suggested we use the tarp. “We can tie one end to that thing. Hopefully those cables aren’t still being used.” She pointed her light at her feet, where rusty bolts held up two old electric cables that were strung along the wall.

The tarp was a little rotten and a little torn, but still strong enough to support us. I worried more about the sixty-year-old bolts. We slid down one at a time, arms and legs wrapped around the makeshift rope, getting even dirtier in the process.

The air was dusty enough that I could see the particles glittering faintly in the beams of our flashlights as we walked along the wide expanse of dirt on one side of the tunnel. In the center there are two parallel tracks, for trains running north and south. Amtrak’s Empire Service line is the one that passes through the tunnel, and the trains continue north across the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge to the Bronx and then on up the Hudson Valley. We stepped hesitantly and slowly, not talking, afraid to disturb the ominous quiet and unsure what to do now that we were in.

We passed a huge mound of old trash bulldozed against a wall, evidence of the people who had once lived here and the subsequent clean-up by the Amtrak workers. Dozens or hundreds of niches like the one we’d entered through lined the upper portion of the tunnel’s west wall, and I wondered how many had housed people.

Graffiti was scattered throughout the tunnel, both simple tags and huge colorful pieces, all layered on top of each other and mixed together with aphorisms and messages—“This city will chew you up and spit you out,” and “R.I.P. SANE,” and “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the tunnel, not a creature was stirring, not even a rat…” On later visits I came to understand that the most desirable spots for murals are the places where ventilation gratings let sunlight in, and this is part of why so many pieces are drawn over each other in clustered layers of paint.

Some of the only murals left undisturbed were the giant black, white, and silver paintings done in the 1980s by a painter named “Freedom.” The murals range from about ten to twenty feet tall, and were pained with the help of a ladder. They range from a Dali-style melting clock, dripping its way down the wall, to a replica of a Ted Williams baseball card, to huge portraits of tunnel residents that are now long-gone. Freedom first found his way into the tunnel when he was 14, and visited constantly for years, making friends with the residents and creating the murals specifically for them, his only audience. These murals have a tremendous impact when they suddenly appear in the beam of a flashlight, the faces gleaming like an old albumen photographic print. Most were already more than a decade old by the time I first saw them, and the fact that so many remained unscathed demonstrated the respect Freedom had earned from his fellow writers. A portrait of the Mona Lisa’s face was one of the few Freedom works that had been tampered with; a new piece of graffiti covered the bottom half of with ten-foot-high mural. But the newer tag had itself been painted over with the words “Where’s your respect, toy?”

We walked on the tracks, stopping to see the things that leapt out of the blackness into the beams of our flashlights, with no idea of how far we’d come or how long we’d been underground. Eventually, we realized it was almost five in the morning and decided to head back.

On our way back to the hole, we heard a train coming. It was just a low rumble at first, coming from all around us, and for a few moments I thought I was just imagining it. Then Elinor heard it too and we both stopped and looked down the tunnel behind us. Far away, the darkness of the tunnel was inexplicably brightening like an underground dawn in the moments just before the orb of the sun is visible. Then the headlights of the train itself appeared around the curve, moving dangerously fast, and the full roar of the engine hit us.

We sprinted for a wall, turning off the flashlights as the light and noise of the train filled the space around us. After so long in darkness and the silence, it was deafening and blinding; the air hummed with the brightness of the light, and the concrete wall shook with the sound. Then the engine flashed past and the beams of the headlights swept on down the tunnel. I caught a quick-flash filmstrip view of heads silhouetted through the windows, the smell of dust and steel, and the clashing of the steel wheels on the rails.

For the short moment that the train was actually passing the tunnel had been bright as day and we felt exposed—we must have been seen, there seemed no chance that all these people could pass 15 feet from us and not know we were there. But the bright-lit faces in the windows had all been staring straight ahead; and then it was gone, heading uptown, across the river, and out of the city, and we were left with the darkness and silence again.

We made our way back to our starting point and climbed up the tarpaulin to the debris-filled ledge with our hole. We decided to walk north along the ledge before going back to the surface. We edged past concrete partitions and climbed around the huge, rusty steel I-beams that support the roof of the tunnel. After walking a few hundred feet, we found a bed—a sleeping bag laid over slabs of foam padding. It had obviously been used recently. Though we stepped over the bedroll and walked on, I felt nervous. It was clear we weren’t the only ones to come to the tunnel, and I wasn’t sure what kind of people the others would turn out to be. These residents already lived on the very margin of the city; would they be angry that, after they had been pushed out of our world, we had invaded theirs?

I could tell Elinor was feeling worried, too, though she seemed less affected than I was. She suddenly dropped down on her knees to look through a narrow space between girders. “Here kitty—come here, kitty…”

I peered over her shoulder and saw two cats, wary and fierce-looking, standing immobile and staring at her. I moved for a better view between girders and suddenly realized that I was looking into an entire room built into the side of the tunnel: clothes were hung on a line stretched from corner to corner, a dingy table was sitting next to a battered chair, and an antiquated radio kept company with a couple more cats perched on the table. The more I looked, the more cats I saw: half-hidden behind the clothesline, perched in the shadowed areas of the girders on the sides, and looking back at us from every corner of the room. All of them were staring at us warily, their eyes gleaming wickedly in the light from our flashlights.

We all stood still for a moment.

“Wow,” said Elinor, “look at all those cats.”

The cats seemed well-fed and at home; along one wall we could see a messy row of food bowls, disposable aluminum trays, and water dishes made from the bottom halves of plastic gallon jugs. The scene was bizarre; who would make a home here, buried in this nocturnal room with two dozen cats? I felt something in my stomach halfway between nervousness and fear.

In following years I would get to know Brooklyn, the woman who lived in that room and fed the cats. Homeless as a teenager, she had found her way into the tunnel the first time by following the half-wild cats that she’d begun to feed in Riverside Park.

“I came, I looked under the wall, I said ‘Oh! Look at all these cats!’ and then I felt sorry for them. I fell in love with the cats so I would come everyday and bring them cat food. And my cats love me. I’m all they have…” she told me, years after that first visit.

At the time, however, I knew none of this. Instead, I felt the weight of all the darkness behind me like a rising tide, and I wanted nothing more than to escape to the surface.

We headed back, passing the bed and then climbing back over the partitions and past the steel beams. When we got to the hole, Elinor went through first. I handed through the flashlights and then squeezed myself through, pushing with my feet against a half-buried cooking pot. I’d stopped noticing that the tunnel air was dusty or stale, but when I finally took a breath of New York City air, it was the purest, sweetest, cleanest thing I’ve ever tasted and I could smell the open space, the autumn breezes, and the light of the first fingers of dawn.

(Written by Steve Duncan)

Ended up troopin it out to this show. Here’s some photos of Decepticon Sean and Styles Pinero the other night at Highline Ballroom. Jada, Sheek, and Monch all made guest appearances throughout the night too.

(Photos via Village Slum)