As if the Graffiti Research Lab hadn't blurred the line between establishment art, graffiti culture, and technology enough, they recently bombed the Museum of Modern Art. During a cocktail reception at the museum, GRL used its laser-guided, software enabled, light spray paint system to project virtually-dripping messages on an interior wall of the museum. They ranged from the tags of well known New York graffiti stars to messages directed at the wine-sipping attendees ("F***......

Like a Jedi knight with an offset spatula, pastry chef Jehangir Mehta switched over to the savory side last September when he opened his first restaurant Graffiti in the East Village. Armed with a few induction burners and assorted kitchen gadgets, Graffiti’s 4-person staff prepares and serves Mehta’s eclectic food out of a pint-sized kitchen. Before Graffiti, Mehta worked with Jean Georges Vongerichten, Rocco DiSpirito, and lots of other chefs. He was most recently pastry......

Stephen Colbert continued his new feature on The Colbert Report program called "Nailed 'Em," in which the television host hopes to overcome the niceties of the legal system with skillful editing and generous amounts of innuendo. This week's subject was Brooklyn's own graffiti "punk," 6-year-old Natalie Shea. You may remember that Shea's chalk drawings - on her own front stoop - prompted a neighbor to complain to the Sanitation Department, which threatened the family with......

Brooklyn Heights residents may have thought their neighborhood had earned a respite from anti-Semitic graffiti after the arrest and confession of Ivaylo Ivanov, who committed and then confessed to a string of vandalism incidents last year that left Brooklyn Heights peppered with swastikas in spray paint. But last week another wall was defaced with a symbol of hate. The incident involved a a brick apartment building at 22 Remsen St. The swastika was first spotted......

Photo: Banksy Banksy, the cheeky street artist/prankster turned multimillionaire art star, was in town last week, presumably for the Damien Hirst-coordinated auction at Sotheby’s to benefit the (Project) RED campaign, which works with corporations like the Gap to raise money for the treatment of A.I.D.S. patients in Africa. The $48 million raised at the event – through the sale of works by Hirst, Banksy, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and others – will......

Train muralist James Top (aka JEE 2) was part of the legendary Odd Partners in the 1970s. The Brooklyn crew bombed with throw ups and block letters; they were highly regarded and had a strong presence in the city. These days Top has taken his art indoors -- teaching a graffiti class in the Bronx and, this weekend, opening his first New York exhibit. Afrology opens this Friday and includes the debut of seventeen variations......

According to new NYPD statistics, graffiti complaints in Brooklyn rose 96% last year, with arrests in the borough increasing by 33%. Citywide, complaints almost doubled from 4,886 in 2006 to 8,866 in 2007, and total arrests rose from 2,962 to 3,786. Williamsburg leads the tagging trend with a total of 186 complaints. “It's so expensive here, yet it looks like a dump,” long-time Williamsburg resident Mel Costello, 63, declared to the Daily News. “It's......

Director of the legendary hip-hop documentary Style Wars, Tony Silver, died last weekend after battling an irreversible brain condition for several years. Shot in New York City in the early '80s and originally airing on PBS in 1983, his documentary is considered to be the first film about hip-hop culture. While the 70 minutes covers rap and breakdancing, its main focus is on graffiti, which at the time was viewed by some as a groundbreaking......

Pictured: All City NRG designed by Vincent "Factone" Ficarra, urban artist in New York. Remember AriZona Iced Tea? Well, its made a cross-country image trip and landed in the heart of NYC with its new energy drink called All City NRG (you know, like the subway lines). As you can see, the cans are all tagged up, and their promo van is similarly decorated -- though it's sort of camouflaged when parked in the......

Last October, on the heels of 6-year-old Natalie Shea getting slapped on the wrist for her chalk graffiti, Ellis Gallagher was jailed for his own chalk art. The 34-year-old artist was in the middle of creating a piece as New York Voices documented his process. The cops saw him, tagged him as a graffiti artist, and took him in. After spending 17 hours in jail the charges were dropped -- but the story doesn't end......

Yesterday this clip of Robert Plant catching a game at the Garden came out. It shows a younger reporter asking the Led Zeppelin singer about the band's possible reunion at the very arena they stand in. Will Led Zeppelin return to the Garden? The answer remains the same... The best part (besides the fact that the two look like they might make out at any moment) is that Plant seems to assume she doesn't know......

Brooklyn Surrogate Court Judge Diana Johnson is the first African-American to be elected to a Surrogate Court judgeship in New York history. With only weeks on the bench, however, someone spray painted racist graffiti inside two separate elevators at the Downtown Brooklyn courthouse. One message read "Judge Diana Johnson is Dumb," and the other read "Judge Diana Johnson is a Dumb (n-word)." Dozens of lawmakers and judges held a rally to support Johnson in the......

The NYPD may have the anti-graffiti task force, but with many graffiti crimes perpetrated in the subway tunnels, the NYC Transit Authority has created its own anti-graffiti team. The Daily News tagged along with the Eagle Team, a "surveillance squad quietly formed three months ago." The Eagle Team members, which include many former NYPD detectives as well as an ex-U.S. marine, inspect and patrol subway tunnels and yards for potential taggers. Vandals engrossed in......

SHOP: Still looking for that perfect gift? The Brooklyn Historical Society is holding the 4th Annual NY Creates Craft Fair, and they may have just what you're looking for. Check it out today and tomorrow, and it will be back the 22nd and 23rd for the real last-minute shoppers. Friday and Saturday // Noon to 6pm // BHS [128 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn] ART: Too much is going on the First Friday of every month, so......

Recently, legend became reality when a 10-story building in SoHo was being converted to a luxury condo. Unearthed in the walls was a large mural created by graffiti pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000.The artwork contains a variety of images and writing executed in spray paint, grease pencil, magic marker and whatever else was on hand — in silver, gold, pink and red. There are cartoonlike pictures of a bomber airplane, images of a......

"New York City in the 1970s was the setting for Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Saturday Night Fever, the nightmare playground for Son of Sam and The Warriors, the proving grounds for graffiti, punk, hip-hop, and all manner of other public spectacle. Musicians, artists, and writers could subsist even in Manhattan, while immigrants from the world over were reinventing the city in their own image." Brian Berger, historian Marshall Berman and a troupe of contributers......

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Grayz, gives the restaurant one star. He says of the restaurant that refuses to call itself a restaurant (it’s a ‘cocktail lounge that serves small dishes’): “These dishes demand fuller attention than the setting allows, and the prices—$39 for the short ribs—only make total sense if eating is the point of a visit.” In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to Belcourt, which he says is much better than......

ArtCal calls him, "the most controversial and downright interesting graffiti artist at large in the UK today" and whether or not you agree -- Banksy is decorating our streets, galleries...and even Brangelina's household walls. In New York he has pranked his way into the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Recently it was announced that his images would be used to sell luxury condos in Williamsburg...and just yesterday......

Notice anything funny about the Calvin Klein billboard below? No, not the hot pink splashing. The giant ad that hangs above Lafayette and Houston has a secret in the "negative space" left by the splashed paint. The silhouette is of the new New Museum building on Bowery. Here is what the billboard looked like over the past few days up until last night: And as Josh Spear pointed out yesterday a "stage 3 reveal" took......

There are plenty of Starbucks in Manhattan (over 170), but if you head over to Brooklyn -- you'll see the streets are mostly void of discarded Venti cups and hardly anyone has heard Josh Groban's new Christmas album. But things are about to change, chain-haters beware.A recent Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable meeting revealed that retail giants such as Starbucks, Duane Reade pharmacies and Chase Bank are planning to double and in some cases triple their......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on 160th St. and Sanford Ave. in Queens, a stabbing on 10th Ave. in Manhattan, and a homicide on Kelly and East 163rd Sts. in the Bronx. CUNY hired a legendary graffiti artist to teach a course on the subject, which is upsetting a lot of people. Ron Kuby is upset that Don Imus is back on the air. Mostly because he took his job to......

A spray-painted swastika was found on the door of a Columbia University Teacher's College professor yesterday morning. Professor Elizabeth Midlarsky, who is Jewish and researches the Holocaust, said she had been "more public" about her work on the Holucaust, "I think there's a very hate-filled person who is an extreme coward. It makes my blood run cold." Midlarsky had received an anti-Semitic flier in her school mailbox on October 17. On October 24, she received......

Hot on the heels of 6-year-old Natalie Shea being caught and fined for chalking up her sidewalk, a second chalker has been nabbed! This one, Ellis Gallagher, is older -- so his punishment was a bit more serious. Seriously! For chalk! The dusty, porous sedimentary rock that leaves markings which wash away in the rain. The Brooklyn Paper reports:The city’s crackdown on sidewalk chalk “vandals” is officially out of control! It was bad enough when......

Paul McDonough, New York City 1968-1972 is the current exhibit at Sasha Wolf's gallery. Wolf, as curator, worked closely with the artist for over a year putting together a collage of street photography from the time. McDonough, a current Brooklynite, says when he arrived here in the late '60s, photographing "satisfied my sketching impulses...I learned to carry a camera everywhere, all the time, loaded with 400-speed film." We highly recommend getting up close and......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Centro Vinoteca. Says of chef Anne Burrell “The woman can fry,” and you’ll be happy with your food provided you choose anything fried, especially those items on the piccolini (small plates) menu. The rest is erractic: “Both on and off the plate, Centro can elate and deflate you.” Peter Meehan goes to Nusara for Thai in $25 and Under; says the restaurant “belongs on the short but growing......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water main break on Pacific St. in Brooklyn, an armed robbery on Jamaica Ave. in Queens, and a burn victim on West 165th St. in the Bronx. Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy reportedly accomplished many feats during his life, but still died at his home in Queens, NY. A fight among members of a group of men, who were turned away from a Chelsea nightclub because they didn't meet......

Ah, City Councilman Peter "I hate graffiti" Vallone weighs in on the chalk "graffiti" made by 6-year-old Natalie Shea on her home's front stoop. Back in 2005, Vallone introduced the law that requires property owners to clean up graffiti, so when a neighbor called 311 to complain about Natalie's drawings (again, mind you, on her own stoop, not a neighbor's stoop), her parents got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation. The Daily News......

The New York Times has an interesting profile of the Senior Vice President for subways at NYC Transit, Michael Lombardi, who will retire next month after 45 years with the agency. He began working for the city making $2.63 an hour as a machinist's helper in 1962 and at the age of 18. He feels, along with many others, that his greatest contribution during his career was the work done to pull the subway system......

Yesterday morning, a swastika and a caricature of a yarmulke-wearing man were found in a building at Columbia University. This is the second hate crime in as many days found at the school's campus - a noose was found on the door of a Teachers College professor earlier this week. The graffiti was in the men's bathroom at Lewisohn Hall, where the School of General Studies is located. Columbia President Lee Bollinger, who was criticized......

Oh, no, is the city going to ban the purchase of Crayola Sidewalk Chalk? The Brooklyn Paper exposes the "new face of vandalism?": 6-year-old Natalie Shea, whose mother got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation about the chalk drawings her daughter drew on their front stoop. The letter read, “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY. FAILURE TO COMPLY … MAY RESULT IN ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST YOU.” In an article that almost......