Ektopia

Joseph Rivera has finnaly written a book about his life in NYC’s Vandal Squad called Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department, 1984-2004 (published by Powerhouse).

Founded in 1980, the Vandal Squad’s mission was to protect the subway system from hardcore criminal acts of destruction like kicking out windows and throwing seats out of train cars. It was only with the Clean Car Program of 1984 that graffiti became the primary focus of this specialized Unit. On a mission to catch those who gained fame under tag names, the Vandal Squad had to identify and locate these individuals cloaked in anonymity (and often so transient they were referred as “ghosts”) using every means available, including the NYPD computer database, search warrants, subpoenas, and even vandals themselves.

ESPVisuals as also posted a short excerpt that really whets the appetite. Definitely one to pre-order I reckon.

Mum, Dad, I’m Into Steampunk is a charming short monologue by Marko Kaye.
[via]

[...] Don’t get me wrong; I still live in your world. In this very house even. But now I exist between two eras: an Edwardian past and a quixotic future where dirigibles can travel through space and time. [...]

“There are no tickets and no reductions for this visit to the underworld. A fat, unspiritual, greasy monk just takes the money and throws it into a basket with unexpected abruptness.” The Palermo Catacombs look 100 times more frightening that their Parisian alternative. Cabinet Magazine took a trip out to check them out. [via]

Phillip Toledano’s bankruped office photo project turned out to be “more archaeology than photography”. Take a look and you’ll see exactly what he means. [via]

I Met The Walrus - “In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s “bed-in” phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”

Stunning animation to an enlightening interview. I had no idea that Lennon was so ahead of his time. It couldn’t be more true if he had said it all yesterday. [via]

One man’s version of Radiohead’s Nude - the alternative title being Big Ideas (Don’t get any) - made with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer (for the drums), HP Scanjet 3c and a hard drive array. Brilliant. [via]

Miroslav Tichý amazing looking DIY cameras and beautiful photos. Take a look at Neatoramas post for more info and get Googley for even more. [via]

We popped over to London Town yesterday, which was an ideal time to link up with NYC The Telectroscope.

“Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.”

Kind of like an silent old version of a webcam you could say! Anyways, we waited in line, so that our little Daughter could hold up a message (”MADE IN NYC”) to whomever was looking in NYC’s lens, but just as we got to the front of the line we heard one of the people looking after the miracle’s connection had “gone down”…I couldn’t work out how optics “go down” but accepted their explanation and left.

It’s a charming story and we’ll definitely go back in a few weeks…we will make a steam punk optical connection with NYC! Here’s Nina waiting patiently in line!

I spent a day at an abandoned asylum back in 2006 and what I saw is still really fresh in my mind. It’s the most haunting place I’ve even been to and I wish I could have captured most than simple “documentation” photos while I was there. Jeremy Harris’s American Asylum collection has done just what I would have loved to have done. Some of his images are chilling. [via]

A site that’s dedicated to guitars from communist Europe. [via]