Aliens and American Apparel Kit Zauhar Published in 2014's Mercer Street (Editor's Choice)
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Aliens and American Apparel
Kit Zauhar
Published in 2014's Mercer Street (Editor's Choice)"I see you. With your Pell Grant refund, I see you coming out of NYU spitting that refund check.
Don't want to share none of you Whole Foods and shit. Let me get some of that kombucha drink,
bitch...You stepped it up. You not in McDonalds, you in Chipotle...You out the hood now. I feel
you. I feel you." -Azealia Banks, "Van Vogue"
It's my first day at my new job. I'm trying hard to pay attention though the bright
fluorescent lights and brighter neon leggings are blinding me. "Ok, so your job is mostly going to
be, like, going around the store asking people if they need help finding anything. And when you
see clothes out of order arrange them by color and size. And put your pointer finger between
every hanger so that they're, like...this: perfectly spaced apart." Kelly, my new manager at
American Apparel, the beacon of chic-minimalist-modernity, looks at me with her huge green
eyes and gives me an artificial grin. She has too many smile wrinkles for a 22-year-old. "It's
called our 'perfect clothes' policy,” she continues. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. For the
next three days (I quit after three days) I perfectly space clothes apart and say, "Heyyyy,
welcome to American Apparel. Can I help you find anything?" while skinny trendy 20-
somethings roll their eyes at my presence and rifle through normcore1 hoodies and jeans. Though
based in Los Angeles, American Apparel is often seen as a symbol of the urban New Yorker. A
store seems to be on every populated street corner of the city, its clothes regularly worn by the
hip and juice-fed, and its patrons can easily be imagined working cool internships at magazines
and hanging out at dive bars after work. The place is Urban Outfitters without the overplayed
1
Urban Dictionary defines this as "A subculture based on conscious, artificial adoption of things
that are in widespread use, proven to be acceptable, or otherwise inoffensive. Ultra-conformists."
Or those that wear "normal" clothes such as plain white t-shirts and basic jeans to counteract the
now mainstream nature of more flashy and eccentric clothing.
1
Helvetica indie vibe, a thrift store without the grime, simple without being unnoticeable. But
behind the neon electric glow and the model-esque clientele is the creeping sense that this store
represents the demise of the artist's paradigm of New York City. The preface of The
Suburbanization of New York City: Is the World’s Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town?
states,
Today New York is on its way to becoming a ‘theme-park city,’ where people can get the
illusion of the urban experience without the diversity, spontaneity, and unpredictability
that have always been its hallmarks. Like the suburbs New Yorkers so long snubbed, the
city is becoming more private, more predictable, and more homogenized.
American Apparel is just one commercialized symbol of New York and other metropolises'
move to the uniform, the suburbanized, the capitalist, and the immaculately clothed. Urban
environments now value the perfectly spaced apart, the minimalist. We have gone from a
Jackson Pollock city of vibrant, random, overlapping strokes to polished condos and parallel
lines.2 High-priced boutiques and fashionable organic restaurants have replaced the spray-painted
technicolor hellhole that was the East Village, embraced and nurtured by a thriving artistic
community. But it's not an illusion, necessarily, of urbanity. It's truly what an urban environment
is becoming and how, now, an urban environment is defined (you don't think that American
Apparel is what a city has become, it's what it is). There might not just be a demise of city
culture, but a complete redefinition of the term, which the younger generation has become
attracted to, though perhaps it has left most people over thirty years old disheartened. The past
2
One
only needs to look at the High Line. Though it's supposed to be "nature in the city," it's
perfectly trimmed, flowered trees seeming to coordinate with one another, all of the furniture
smooth IKEA-esque wood and metal. There is no rustica, nothing left to nature's natural course
of tangling vines and dirtied edges. The thing is, everything has an edge, a border, a place a
specific few inches from one another.
2
generation remembers the lovable shit hole that was The Village and wonders where the soul
went.
Located in an area not industrial enough to be gritty but too shabby to be considered
shabby-chic stands the lonely, grand, muted-yellow-grey mass of a building. It is coated with a
layer of molten graffiti, each individual piece of art, from the large yellow wheat paste of a
Native American chief holding a shotgun, to the sprayed-on "Dyke" tag, are in different stages of
decay. If Gatsby had been a street artist, this is what his mansion would've looked like after his
death. This building is a graffiti junkie, it has already overdosed but it seems to be pleading,
sunken eyes wide, for more. So I oblige: My friend Cooper and I dash across Bowery, laughing
at the rattling sound a ricocheting spray paint can is making in my backpack. We pass by
boutique bars and shops selling specialty plush toys, realizing the absurdity of the neighborhood
and what we're going to do. We stop behind a church to shake up the can. The sound of that little
metal ball hitting the little metal trigger echoes down the whole street. Again, we are laughing.
We're going to get caught, I think. People are going to notice us. I joke that we can flash our
NYU IDs and the cops would probably drive us back to campus. The humor comforts us, but the
paranoia still lingers. It's 11PM on a Monday night and we're about to go spray paint 190
Bowery.
It's my third time here, and I notice how it already has changed so much. Wheat pastes
that were quite fresh, still carrying that laminated sheen of new paper, have started to crinkle and
fray, the colors dulling out. Many I remember seeing (such as Ai Wei Wei portraits) are gone.
It's both reassuring to know that the illegal act you're about to do will vanish and depressing to
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realize that the art you're about to make doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe it's because I'm a snobby Tisch kid, but I have been taught that I should make art that
lasts, that's transcendental. As I press down the spray paint, I am giving away the right to
permanence, to having my identity really matter. I'm giving up the need to give a fuck. And
again I feel empowered. It's really no big deal if I make a mistake. So instead of trying to figure
out some deep quote to put down, or trying to trace out some intricate design, I make a little alien
face, and tag my name. Cooper also asks me to write down the first thing that comes to my mind
when I look at 190 Bowery. I contemplate it for a second then scrawl out “HOLY SHIT” on an
area of free space and we walk back to the dorms, high off adrenaline and maybe paint fumes.
However, what came with a post-adolescent joyride of rebellion was an unfamiliar disconnect
with my art. Not even before my tag dried, I felt like it no longer belonged to me. 190 Bowery
had claimed it, taken my name in a style reminiscent of Chihiro's in Spirited Away. I watch the
letters of my name float into the air and disappear into the nothingness, and I am only a
spectator. It is a humbling and frightening experience:
To play in public space is to break the rules, to trespass one's own emotions and
sensibilities upon what is otherwise meant to be anonymous, functional, and boringly
quotidian. (McCormick, 132)
A night at 190 Bowery is no normal night. Even its façade offers a break from the picturesque
cliché of Washington Square Park. Though I wonder what rules I am breaking (besides the
obvious law against vandalizing). It is technically trespassing, but I don't feel the quaking of fear
of doing something I'm not supposed to. Nor do I feel the vulnerability of having revealed
something profoundly moving about my psyche. I feel...the same. It feels more like I'm doing
190 Bowery a favor than anything, a charitable decorating.
4
190 Bowery is the cancer patient we let take infinite hits of weed and a few too many
shots of morphine because we want the memory of the person to stay at whatever cost, at
whatever detriment, even if it is only the façade of the person that is still consistent with the
vibrant spirit in our minds. The new New York City now wears a more tailored suit, a silk
Armani tie, more presentable to realtors and investors. Hipsters, as annoying and
pretentious a reputation as they may have, were the ones to purchase and create a majority of the
art in the city. Now,
...formerly boho environs of Brooklyn become unattainable due to creeping
Manhattanization and seven-figure real estate prices, creative professionals of child-
rearing age — the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves
too cool to ever leave the city — are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the
suburbs. (Williams)
With the hipsterization of the suburbs comes something near unthinkable 20 years ago: the move
from the artistic, disorganized, eclectic New York City to a uniform, expensive, corporate
metropolis. Though I personally may not the value the pristine white condos that have replaced
cracked and faded apartment buildings, the affluent and powerful do. One only needs to look at
the street art mecca that was 5 Pointz, now painted over a stark, pasty, soulless white, which
represents a poignant if not depressing step forward in the process of gentrification.
This move may seem counterintuitive. After all, the introduction of murals and vibrant
pieces of street art usually represent a bettering of a place. However, it can also reveal the most
shallow and ill-informed intentions of a community. Street art can be tame as well as defiant.
Often gentrified neighborhoods want to be rebellious without being harmful, risky without being
dangerous, in other words, street art has become the cheeky graphic tee on the body of a
neighborhood, maintaining its cool while still carrying the fabricated air of nonchalance:
The problem is, when a neighborhood attracts artists, it quickly becomes trendy and
popular because 'it’s the sign of a vibrant avant-garde culture,' says Nicholas Riggle.
Who wouldn’t want to live in such a creative place? Against their will, by their mere
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presence, these artists have unwillingly transformed these neighborhoods ... And indeed
the rich did flock to these neighborhoods – in Berlin, and New York’s Soho or Chelsea.
(Ariandis)
Artistic communities attract the rich for obvious reasons: they are trendy, trendiness sells. Let's
go back to my "NYU student" joke, which holds as much truth as humor. I, like many young
white people, hold the unique combination of guilt and privilege, and I always have and always
will. From the age of six I have carried the shame of being a gentrifier. My family, half Chinese,
half white, was one of the first of either race to move into our neighborhood in West
Philadelphia. Our family was seen as a beacon of hope; I, the darling of the community. People
knew I was going to go to college. No neighbor hesitated to ask me what I wanted to be when I
grew up, because there was a great chance that I would be able to be a veterinarian, a writer, a
dolphin trainer. And I must admit that the neighborhood got better, because middle-aged white
professionals can afford the better coffee, the donations to clean up the park, to give an extra
buck here and there to help a neighbor.3 As the years passed gunshots were heard less frequently,
my parents had to go smaller distances to get good-quality food, and slowly the neighbors started
to look more like me. And now West Philadelphia is seen as the Brooklyn of Philadelphia. A
blue grass band lives down the block. Organic and fair-trade cafés are on every street. There are
now more white neighbors than black. And the house my parents bought for such a good deal
twelve years ago would now be too pricey. It's terrible to say, but the first glimpses of
3
This is exactly what happened with my father. He would give odd jobs to some of the
struggling members of the neighborhood, which helped stabilize the community and create an
incentive to work. This is not to glorify my father, but to show how when there is just a little
extra money to spare, the neighborhood's collective wealth can increase exponentially, leading to
very quick gentrification.
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gentrification do make one hopeful of a safer and closer-knit community. And possibly a local
Whole Foods.
New York, especially the Village, gentrifies on steroids, and it's possible that many other
neighborhoods are moving in that direction, one where even the first layer of the gentrifiers (the
artists that create the "vibrant community") can't afford to live there anymore, replaced by the
second layer of the sometimes artistically minded, always affluence elite. One only needs to look
at the Whole Foods on the Bowery, a mere four blocks from 190 Bowery. To an outsider, the
Whole Foods might be insignificant, perhaps even a good thing. Local/organic/fair-trade/ethical
food, we now depend on these labels to validate our decisions and our neighborhood's identity.
However,
Those neoliberal shoppers prefer the impersonal embrace of a corporate parent, disguised
as some vague moral goodness. Yet a principle like seasonality is sacrificed to the lure of
exotic irradiated produce available year-round...And it does seem infantile to shop at
Whole Foods while all around you sits the very food cultures about which Whole Foods'
publicity materials fantasize. (Raza)
In this way Whole Foods functions as the American Apparel of grocery stores. In "Dispatches:
On The Bowery Whole Foods," Raza remarks on the multitude of wholesome, ethnic, small
groceries, how he can still get fresh seafood from a fishmonger, and he wonders why people
would choose not to take the authentic and historically proven good food over the manufactured
pseudo-hippie fare, but to me, it's obvious: because it's prettier, it's cleaner, it's more orderly. It's
not foolish of people. I immediately see the appeal of shopping under a warm energy efficient
glow for perfectly spaced apart colorful produce instead of bumping into shelves dusty canned
goods dingy, cramped shop. And a raw fish will stink up your FEED canvas grocery tote.
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Besides that, there is the appeal of the organic sticker, the fair trade emblem. Even if the food
from the fishmonger is organic, it's not verified. And if it doesn't have the sticker, it's not worth
it. So goes transition from the small, potentially very humane, local business to the mass
corporation.
I see this change as mostly coming from "slacktivism," the idea of being a part of a
movement for change without actually doing much. Slacktivists often sign online petitions and
make a semi-conscious effort to buy local and fair-trade. They share the occasional Alternet
article and rant about the uprising of consumerism from a Starbucks. So, to shop at Whole Foods
is to belong to a great cultural movement that is not just about bettering your soul through
wholesome nourishing greens but to better the environment and the world. Slacktivism is just as
evident in the art world. There is a draw towards spaces that will only require a bit of your
attention span, that you can go to and see, and then come out of feeling satisfied and cultured. So
goes the ephemeral public art piece. The temporary art installation, the mural that has a life span
of a month, is the perfect destination for the "slacker intellectual." It offers an artistically
gratifying experience without the time or attention needed for a whole museum or even gallery.
It's a place that allows documentation; you can go and take a photo for social media and be
relevant without seeming needy or attention-seeking, and it's a space that makes art feel more
like an event or party than an academic chore that allows one to maintain one's unspoken
intellectual status amongst friends. To create a mural is to make a statement without real
repercussions, and to go see an ephemeral piece of art is to seem like you are upsetting the
quotidian without actually harming or changing anything. There is also something to say of the
intrinsic coolness of a space when it is made ephemeral, when there is a deadline. There is an
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obvious pressure, yes, to see something before it's gone, but these spaces also work with the
short attention span and attraction to fads that Too often you hear about how someone "was
planning to see that," or "is making a special trip" to go to an aforementioned art gallery,
installation, pop-up store, the list goes on. In this way, a space not only becomes a destination
but the ending of some sort of pseudo-spiritual pilgrimage. There is now a religion for a fad, a
devotion to the temporary. You want to show up to the party just in time to see everything erupt
into a an ecstatic cerebral orgasm clad in flannel and vintage polyester.
At 190 Bowery a visitor always feels late to a party, so it's a space that few have eagerly
documented, though it's been around for over a century and has had the temporal continuity of
being coated with some outstanding street art. Perhaps the building does not have the grandeur or
prestige of 5 Pointz (or the curated graffiti, which obviously propels the quality of the work to
near gallery-worthy levels), but it does have the historical value and immutability of content. 190
Bowery, perhaps first seen as just another rebellious building neglected by the rich and nurtured
by the impoverished and free-spirited during the 80's and 90's, is now a time capsule of an era,
one of the last of its kind, and it's simultaneously very proud of itself and very pitiable. It
reminds those of past generations, now relics, of what New York used to be. For people like me,
who are too young and naïve to view the building as anything but simply "cool," and
"interesting," 190 Bowery becomes a taxing space because it urges me to see more and to ignore
or bypass nothing. Unlike 5 Pointz, which though messy has a sprawling organization thanks to
an actual curator, 190 Bowery is a free for all on stone. You try to claim what is yours, but it's
ultimately never yours or anyone else's. It's complete chaos. To actually notice an individual
piece of art is to look extremely closely at the entire façade and then go deeper and deeper. There
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is an extravagance and a gratuitousness to it all; I have the feeling of exiting a museum after
spending a few hours too long surrounded by the beautiful and the pretentious, but almost
instantaneously. It's exhausting trying to absorb everything at once, but it's a time commitment to
appreciate the individual piece, and I don't know if I have the capacity to do either. Which is why
for most it's simply a photo-op, a quick glance, a head nod towards a space with a "that's cool,"
accompanying it. It's a small act of artistic slacktivism to acknowledge and take a photo, the
common act of looking without seeing. People don't want to sacrifice the time, but they also
don't want to be faced with what New York once was. 190 Bowery comes with as much guilt as
it does sacrifice and spectacle. And as we know from our newfound fandom of the semi-ethical
Whole Foods and American Apparel, this new generation will go the extra mile; pay the extra
dollar, to avoid guilt.
And it's not just about sacrificing your time, but it's about sacrificing your individual
identity. My tag did not belong to me because 190 Bowery had claimed it and made it its own,
because ultimately my tag matters more to the integrity, reputation, and tradition of the space
more than it did to my own benefit. For me, tagging 190 Bowery was fun but passing moment.
For the space, the tag is integral to its identity; it is defined by every piece and needs every piece,
even if the individual marking isn't seen. That space asks us to remember some but forget a lot,
to see the beauty in the past and wonder why more buildings aren’t like this. But at the same
time, if I imagine multiple 190 Bowerys, going down the sidewalk, the gentrifier, the kombucha-
loving girl inside me, cringes, because the building also makes me grimace. Despite the new
artwork going up, despite my own contribution to the building, it feels like it's dying. I don't
know if it is worth the sacrifice when, for 190 Bowery, the sacrifice will last a lifetime. In
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Patricia Phillips' "Temporality and Public Art," she states, "In both private and public life the
phenomenological dimensions of indeterminancy, change, and the temporary require aggressive
asssimilation..." (331) However, the aggression seems to come not when an area changes, but
remains too static. Cities embrace change, there's often a stampede of eager trendsetters, rushing
with vigor to witness and be part of the change, but there usually is not force needed to
implement the change. New York, especially, likes fads and events that leave as quickly as they
come. It's a masochistic pleasure: the rush to see a space, the temporary community of art lovers
that flock like travelers on a pilgrimage to see a space, the possibility of missing a space, the
regret of not making it making which makes one rush even faster for the next. It's a bit sick, yes,
but it keeps the adrenaline of the city constantly pumping. If something stays too long (and this
too long is determined by a multitude of factors, often random):
Like starlings on a trash-strewn field the hipsters alight together, peck intently for a time,
and at some indiscernible signal take wing again at once. If they are the American avant-
garde it is true, I think, in only this aspect—the unending churn of their tastes, this adult
faddishness in the adolescent style. (Wasik)
And if aggression is not shown to the space, then, such as with the case with 190 Bowery, it is
shown complete indifference. The first few times I visited the space in the daytime, I was
surprised by how many pedestrians leisurely walked past the building without a second glance.
Even a tourist would only stop for a second to take a quick snapshot (I have seen visitors in
Washington Square Park take more time getting pictures of squirrels). 190 Bowery has always
screamed to not be ignored, and this aggression is met with nonchalance. Places like American
Apparel prove that when a space is too loud, it's uncool. And a throwback is only cool if it
acknowledges it is so. A girl wearing huge mom-jeans ironically is cool. And old man wearing
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the same jeans because they're comfortable is lame. 190 Bowery is not meaningful because it's
not in on trend; it's not in on any joke or laughing at anything. It's not trying to be anything. All
it's striving to do is survive in a world that simply does not have the time for it.
This would be the logical conclusion to this essay: ending on a cynical note about the
demise of the "old New York," with a mix of compassion and apathy (or more specifically,
compassion about the apathy–appropriate for an NYU student). But I'm starting to think that I'm
actually a bit of an idealist (sad, because I really shouldn't be). Recently I talked to Jay Maisel,
the owner of 190 Bowery (which serves as both his home and photography studio). He did not
meet the expectations of the free-spirited homeless-looking man with a jolly smile and an
untamed beard that I had in my head (sort of like a punk rock Bill Cunningham) at all. To
transcribe the interview would take too long, and to eloquently describe the hellish, sweat-
inducing conversation4 would take another essay. So instead, I will take a near scientific style
when documenting some of Maisel's sentiments:
1) When asked whether or not the subject liked the graffiti, he said he felt indifferent, that it did
not necessarily please him. The subject mostly felt ambivalent towards it (though he has a
particular hatred for tags [which made writer feel an ocean of shame crash over her trembling
body]).
4
I have terrible phone anxiety, a fear of talking to people who hold any position of power, and
was completely caught off-guard by how dispassionate Maisel was about street art. If you saw a
curly-haired creature pacing nervously on the 8th Floor of Bobst, talking too loudly about
graffiti, there was a good chance that was me.
12
2) When asked whether or not the subject liked the gentrification of the Bowery, subject responded that he did, as now the neighborhood was a lot more "civilized." 3) When asked about the subject's feelings towards 5 Pointz being painted over, subject responded with indifference, saying something along the lines of "I don't know why everyone was so upset about it. They knew it was going to happen. The owner had to sell it." 4) Subject says that 190 Bowery was never supposed to be a site for graffiti. A while ago, a building down on Spring Street was actually used for a similar purpose as 5 Pointz: to host curated graffiti. However, that space closed, and the sprawling building that was 190 Bowery seemed like a suitable replacement both in size and location. 5) Subject acknowledges that like 5 Pointz, 190 Bowery will one day be painted over. The subject did not reveal strong feelings for this foreshadowing. However, despite how nerve-wrecking and depressing it was talking to Jay Maisel, it made me realize at least one reason why ultimately we now live in such an apathetic and clean-edged New York: Each generation: each social class, each race, each neighborhood, is relying on one another to keep the "old New York" (whatever that may be) alive. I was relying on Maisel to give me hope that street art isn't dead, that there is someone out there still preserving the New York I never had the chance to love. But it seems like Maisel was long done caring, now ready to pass on the blame and the burden to someone else, content to live with the art, but ready at the first opportunity to remove it. The burden is passed till there are no hands to grasp it, and it slips and crashes onto cement like delicate porcelain. We want the hardship, commitment, if it only lasts as long as the collective's attention span. 13
But perhaps it's healthy to feel guilt.5 It's easy to disassociate myself with the my tag, to
write it off as a fun experiment that only a white art student could get away with in a class, to see
it not as risky or in any way self-sacrificial. It's easy for me to acknowledge that Whole Foods
and American Apparel are fun and convenient and cool, and simultaneously criticize their
contributions to gentrification (even though I have a receipt from both stores in my bag). It's
difficult for me to realize that I have always served as a catalyst to a problem that has forced
many hardworking people out of their hard-earned homes, but the truth is that I have. And it
hurts, but it's even more painful for me to think of everyone in my generation turning into a Jay
Maisel: cold, dispassionate, concerned with only what's happening inside the confines of a multi-
million dollar home.
Spaces that require sacrifice are now meant to be ephemeral. 5 Pointz was referred to as a
"street art mecca," and now it remains a legend, a place worth the sacrifice, because it's gone.
Only some could be a part of the trend, and like an exclusive concert, people want in even more
when they realize the tickets are sold out. However, till the indeterminate future, 190 Bowery
will be covered with the same layer of graffiti Maisel scowls at and I still find utterly intriguing
(and dare I say it–at some angles, beautiful). Though this means that 190 Bowery is an
institution, it means that for many, going to the site, taking the time to absorb the space and
become captivated with it, is more of a chore than a fun field trip. And I sadly think that it may
be too late to solve the problem, to halt, even temporarily, this problem of suburbanization,
5
I refrain now from using the ever-popular liberal arts motto "check your privilege," though that
is essentially what I mean.
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gentrification, hipsterization.6 We have never learned how to repent, how to take guilt and
responsibility for something that requires a quotidian sacrifice, when we can now so readily
abandon, just as I did with my tag. Why try to fix or even contribute to the chaos around us when
we can walk into American Apparel and see everything as we left it?
On a rainy day I duck for cover in a close by store to find it perfectly arranged. My body
is bathed in the holy glow of bright white fluorescence. I feel like I am in control of my
environment. There is nothing to fear. I am guilty of nothing. I feel nothing but muted
contentment. As I walk through, admiring the sleek button-downs and elegant shoes, I
accidentally brush past a rack of dresses, skewing the arrangement. Before I can even turn
around to try and fix it, a small pretty girl scurries over and places her forefinger between the
hangers with the precision of a machine. When she is satisfied with the perfect clothes she
flashes me a smile and says, "Heyyy, can I help you find anything?" Despite everything I have
been taught, that I have written, that I have criticized, and debased, I cannot help but smile and
think that this store, this new New York, is a demonically beautiful thing.
6
All
of the "-ations," an easy label within itself to address issues that require a thousand pages of
commentary which will never be written because of the easy packaged words, which seem to
have all the answers within themselves.
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Works Cited
Arandis, Fanny. "World Crunch." The Perverse Effect Of Street Art On Neighborhood
Gentrification. WorldCrunch, 04 Apr. 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Banks, Azealia. Van Vogue. Banks, Azealia. Machinedrum, Jef Martens, Lone, 2012. Web.
Chan, Sewell. "Ask the 'Suburbanization of New York' Editors." The New York Times. The New
York Times, 17 Aug. 2009. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
McCormick, Carlo, Ethel Seno, Marc Schiller, Sara Schiller, Banksy, Anne Pasternak, and J.
Tony. Serra. Trespass: A History of Uncomissioned Urban Art. Ko''ln: Taschen, 2010.
Print.
"Normcore." Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary, 27 Mar. 2007. Web. 08 May 2014.
Phillips, Patricia. "Temporality and Public Art." Art 48.4 (1989): 331. Jstor. Web. 8 May 2014.
Raza, Asad. "Monday, May 14, 2007." Dispatches: On The Bowery Whole Foods. 3 Quarks
Daily, 14 May 2007. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Wasik, Bill. "My Crowd, Or, Phase 5: A Report from the Inventor of the Flash Mob." Harper's
Magazine Mar. 2006: n. pag. Harper's Magazine. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Williams, Alex. "Creating Hipsturbia." The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Feb.
2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
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