The Bridge is On

There's some blog-rot for you--nearly 6 months since the last post.

NYC has been interesting. One thing that has been lacking is a sense of the city's hip hop culture. I did buy a couple mixes from a little stall on 14th St--one was a good mix of Nas's new and old stuff. And you see kids (and men) breakin' for cash in the subways..or in Columbus Circle. But you don't see graff in Manhattan. Got to get to the outer boroughs for that.

I did buy Soundwalk's Bronx series, and I'm looking forward to taking the 4/5/6 up there to do the graff and hip hop walks. (I actually bought the physical CD from Amazon instead of merely the mp3s through their website, since that gives you all 3 Bronx tours in nice packing, for the price of 2 via their website.)

But I'm running out of time..just a few weekends left here in the city.

Tonight, I was about to get to bed, flipping through our limited selection of channels, when I came across someone interviewing Q-Tip. Turned out to be an episode of "The Bridge"
which is all about showing classic NYC hip hop videos. Really regret not finding this earlier--just over the past few weeks I missed episodes about Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island--check the link above and just take a look at the playlists of videos!

But glad I caught this episode, which was dedicated to Dilla. A number of great videos for Dilla-produced tracks--a couple of Tribe's ("1nce Again", "Find a Way"); a couple off Q-Tip's "Amplified" ("Breathe & Stop", "Vivrant Thing"); plus Common's "The Light"; and brief interviews w/ not only Q-Tip, but also Waajeed and Geology.

Here's something weird--I randomly talked to Geology when he, Waajeed, Rich Medina, and Theo came through Mighty in September.

In grabbing the link for Rich Medina's site, discovered he's got this monthly at SOB's dedicated to Fela & Afro-beat...another thing that has been lacking from my NYC stay has been any going out to listen to music.

I have had some good and interesting times in the city--a la Fela, the best day was prob the Saturday afternoon evening that I hit a Romare Bearden exhibition at a gallery in Midtown, then scampered down to Grand Central and took the 7 out to LIC; with Joel took the G to BAM, just in time to catch a screening of "Fela! Fresh From Africa"; talked to the filmmakers and the artist Ghariokwu Lemi, who did a lot of Fela's album covers (got to try to make it out to Williamsburg this weekend to catch his show, "Political Cartoons from Nigeria"--I gave him my e-mail address, and he forwarded me not only the flyer for his show, but also this NYT article that mentions him); from there back on the subway, out to the Brooklyn Museum, for their fantastic free 1st Saturday--caught the Annie Leibowitz and "Tigers of Wrath" exhibits, but didn't have time for a couple other exhibits, which I'll have to try to make it back for. We closed the museum, but our night wasn't over--went back in to Fort Greene, and after considering going into "Stonehome Wine Bar" and then Moe's, we ended up down the block at a shiny relatively new bar called Mullane's--which turned out to be fun b/c we talked to the colorful Irish proprietor for a while.

Come to think of it, that wasn't even the end of the night, b/c we'd neglected to eat dinner, so after getting dropped off back in the East Village, I got a tasty gyro at Cinderella's on 2nd Ave (after stopping and talking to Justin, the Quebecois guy setting up his Xmas tree operation in front of St. Mark's), and then met Matteo at Lit Lounge, which we closed down.

I need some more nyc nights like that one..