The Art Revolution Of Long Island City

Last weekend in one of the city jaunts I do writing for Time Out New York, I was sent on assignment to check out the “underground art movement” in Queens. I started at the epicenter, the place where P.S. 1 (MoMA’s younger outpost) and The Museum of the Moving Image hold court, Long Island City.

Although these enormous established museums are extremely interesting- and it’s extremely interesting that they’ve found their place in an outer borough, I was more interested in the smaller institutions, the homegrown movements that have survived on cult status and loyal following and word-of-mouth. I was instructed, on a last-minute whim, to visit 5Pointz , a graffiti mecca, aka “The Institution of Higher Burnin’” (whatever that means), and a place I would feel about 90 years old in a Christmas sweater, until walking into the P.S. 1 party crowd.

When I arrived at the large industrial building on Davis Avenue that is home to 5 Pointz, I immediately tweeted that I didn’t belong. The artists climbing ladders, arms of spray paint cans, were more than artists, they were perpetually cool. The kind of people you could meet at 20 or 50 who would still know the best dive bars, the newest music, the best shopping district. The second thing that struck me was that instead of the four large walls full of tags (graffiti name writing) that I expected, there were no tags, just many characters, and many walls of phrases and one word soliloquies . I immediately got to stalking Jonathan Cohen, also known as Meres One, also known as the artist who took over this building to make it what it is today. Meres replied to my email with his phone number and when I finally got hold of him, never mind the mailbox full of messages from R&B icons, pop superstars and national magazines begging to shoot at 5 Pointz , he was exactly what I expected. A street kid, grown up, with the personality to speak to a reporter as he would a man on the corner, and the sense to pull out a PR list of okay’d phrases when the quote portion came to fruition. This ability to dip into both worlds, clearly Meres’ inner assistant and the force that helps him maintain the real appeal of 5Pointz.