Bay Area graffiti fans should be in heaven this weekend, with so many amazing events celebrating the urban art form jumping off in both SF and the East Bay starting today, Thursday, and ending on Saturday with The 3rd Annual Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle (EIGB). This evening (Thursday, Oct 8th) kicks things off at the 1:AM Gallery in San Francisco with The Can Film Festival, which will include screenings of the two graf films, Style Wars and Bomb It. The films will be followed by a Q&A session with a panel that will include Kevin Epps, Suzie Lundy, Erin Yoshioka, Estria Miyashiro and will be moderated by hip-hop author Jeff Chang. Screenings start at 7pm but doors open at 6:30pm. Even better, this is a free event, so get there early to ensure admission. 1:AM Gallery is located at 1000 Howard St. (near 6th St.), San Francisco, CA . Click here for more info. Note that tomorrow at 1:AM gallery will be the last day for the exhibit Don't Sweat The Technique - Ode To The Spray Can Art Show, featuring art by judges and contestants involved in Saturday's Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle.

Then tomorrow (Friday, October 9th) is the big event at the Eastside Arts Alliance in East Oakland-- the Pecha Kucha Night Oakland: Don't Sweat The Technique - Graffiti For Social Change, which is being presented in partnership by the Eastside Arts Alliance, Hard Knock Radio, Samurai Graphix and Youth Speaks. The event is happening at 2277 International Blvd., Oakland, CA 94606 from  7:30-10:30pm tomorrow (get there early)! Its ten presenters scheduled include legendary graf archivalist Jim Prigoff (co-author of Spraycan Art, Walls of Heritage Walls of Pride and Graffiti New York), Spie from the mighty Bay Area TDK crew, Steve Grody (author of Graffiti LA), and San Francisco community activist Nancy Hernandez.
According to artist Estria, who is another of the presenters and who was instrumental in bringing this event to Oakland, "Pecha Kucha is a great way to expose your art to many professionals in other fields in one quick-fire burst."

Addressing the clearly appreciative audience that packed the outdoor area of the Oakland Museum of California on Friday night (August 7th) for the East Bay Express' (EBX) mega 2009 Best Of The East Bay Party (BOEB), Goapele perfectly summed up the positive vibe of the entire evening.

"It's so good to be in Oakland and to have something positive like this going on," sincerely spoke the hometown soul singer between songs from the Amoeba Music Main Stage, articulating what many people must have been thinking at this huge, culturally diverse and uplifting event.

Accurately subtitled Subcultures and only in its second year, the Oakland Museum staged happening has fast become an important local cultural event, this year attracting 20,000 people -- more than double the expected number, according to Jody Colley, the publisher of the independently owned and operated alternative weekly.

After making her observation, Goapele, along with her tight four piece band, launched into the artist's new song "Milk + Honey" -- a song that incidentally appeared on the 15 track Best Of The East Bay Party 2009 CD Sampler, the free CD that was being handed out at the event that free to the public.

O.B: It just stems from the four elements thing really. It may seem a little dated, played out or even irrelevant to some now -- and perhaps it is -- but there was a time when hip-hop was more than rap, it was a cultural thing and the ethos of hip hop is still very important to us here. Ireland is a small country and we're kind of behind the times! So I guess we are still living in the 80s and what with the recession and doom and gloom, plus the revival of 80s electro, boogie, funk, not to mention fashion sense, it certainly seems like the 80s are back!!


Amoeblog: Having hip-hop records/CDs + graffiti supplies in the same place is the perfect match -- yet there are no others in Ireland who do it, correct? Are there other stores like yours overseas that you know of?

O.B: Right, well we cover Ireland. Like I say, it's a small country. It's not easy for us to stay afloat, so in all reality there wouldn't be much room for competition. Anyone who sets up a record shop now is insane. Overseas there is a great place in LA -- 33Third, which is a carbon copy of us (though we have been around longer!!). Me and Splyce [All City co-owner] were there in 2006 -- it was quite surreal walking into the place. We got a wierd deja vu vibe.
Amoeblog: I would imagine that specializing in vinyl with music and art supplies -- both of which can't be digitally duplicated for free -- must have ensured your longevity as a business. Has it?

O.B: Mmm, it's tough to say. We started out in a pre broadband world. Don't forget, this downloading business is hella new! Taken in context it is a millisecond -- under a decade. If you take that in a historical context, 10 years is nothing, so no one knows how this will pan out. The internet is like the Wild West at the moment but I have no doubt that that will be curtailed. One thing it has hit is CDs -- mixtapes and such -- and magazines, which kids now just don't see the point of buying. In under 5 years we have gone from selling tons of mags and mix CDs to almost none. If you talk to distributors they will tell you that is the same everywhere.

This is the kick-off post in a seven-week summer series of Graffiti Amoeblogs, focusing on the art of graffiti and running every Saturday from now, July 4th, until Saturday, August 15th, 2009 -- the date that will mark what would have been the 40th birthday of Mike DREAM Francisco, the legendary Bay Area graffiti artist who was tragically murdered nine years ago on the streets of Oakland. Rest in peace, DREAM. Your legacy will live forever.

Included in the numerous blogs in this series will be an interview with DEMER of the longtime NYC Wallnuts crew, who decades later is still making graffiti art, and who currently runs the store Graffiti Comix in Belleville, New Jersey, where he combines his two life-long passions/hobbies -- graffiti and comic books. There will also be an interview with OB, who runs the graffiti supply (and record) store All City in Dublin, Ireland. That same Graffiti Amoeblog will also take a look at the Irish graffiti scene.

James & Karla Murray, the hard working and prolific graffiti photo-journalists (Broken Windows, Burning New York, Store Front, Miami Graffiti), will also be interviewed here and high-quality images of their best New York City and Miami graffiti shots will also be included. Future Amoeblogs will also focus on Cali graffiti and its makers, and of course there will be a whole blog dedicated to DREAM, who was an amazing artist. 

Photo-journalists/authors James and Karla Murray's last two graffiti books (Broken Windows and Burning New York) as well as their very recently published Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (all three published by Gingko Press) all covered the territory of the five boroughs of New York City.

But for their latest graffiti book, published this week by Prestel, they traveled to Miami, Florida to capture the 200 + vibrant images for this recommended
contemporary art coffee table book.

Simply titled Miami Graffiti, it is an amazing collection that captures the vibrant and stylistically diverse graffiti and murals of Miami, a city that for some reason tends to be overlooked somewhat when it comes to its street art scene. In fact, this is the first book to focus soley on Miami graf. Flipping through the pages upon pages of perfectly shot, bright, colorful panoramic shots, it's immediately evident that the husband and wife team of James and Karla Murray have both a real passion and a true gift for what they do.

For this Amoeblog I invited the photo authors, who I will interview in a few weeks on the New York graf scene, to supply the Amoeblog with some high resolution jpegs of Miami Graffiti from pages I randomly picked, based on my own taste and the variety of styles displayed. I also asked them to say a few words on each shot and the subject captured. Their words are below, with the page of the book each image appears on as well.


p.40) CROME
The artist CROME says, "I always like to incorporate a character into my piece because if you just do letters it can look repetitive. You need something more to look at than just letters."