I am back from vacation! A short fishing trip with old friends bumped up against a week in LA and suddenly I was gone for two weeks and everything in my life has pilled up. But I am in NYC for the next three weeks (theoretically) and I am about to start fucking up my to do list. The #1 thing on that list? Publish some photos from my LA trip that are already a week old!

Remember when I shot Mint & Serf’s release party for their book Support, Therapy & Instability? Well they happened to have the LA release party last Tuesday when I just happened to be in LA. Hanging out with New Yorkers for the few days we were both in town was pretty much the highlight of my LA trip. What does that say?

Anyway, Good Peoples helped them throw a book release party on top of the new Ace Hotel in DTLA. Bunch of graffiti kids were there including my old buddy Shark Toof and they had one of the paintings on display. The owner of the painting showed up to the party as well which was pretty cool. The homie Blu Jemz DJ’d and I flirted with some babes and then I headed off to Nightswim. Meanwhile they got kicked out of their own party because that’s what happens when you throw a party for vandals in a fancy hotel. That’s the pppunk rock shit right there.

So click here to look at all the photos from the LA release party of Support, Therapy & Instability at the Ace Hotel and I am gonna go deal with my life real quick.

Infamous vandals, New York natives and corporate shills Mint & Serf released a book last night called Support, Therapy & Instability which documents the creation of several huge paintings they did with Pablo Power, Jacuzzi Chris and the Peter Pan Posse. One of the paintings was shown at the PPP art show but the rest have yet to be seen until the release of the limited edition book.

The book features essays by Carlo McCormick, Cat Marnell (who is one of the only drug addicted socialites with any actual talent) and an essay by “Peter Pan” that addresses the weird world where rich girls from the Hamptons and huge global brands want to give you money for being a fucked up graffiti artist. Interesting thoughts on how to take money from Nike the same week you are getting the shit beat out of you by some cops.

The paintings in the book straddle a similar line between being fine art and just being “a bunch of scribbles” like my mom would say.  As corporate as Mint & Serf have gone, they have always kept to their throw up graffiti style and could never be confused with the “street art” that mom appreciates. The paintings are very raw and could blend in with a lot of walls in the city. They just invited their friends over, got fucked up and covered up each other’s tags over and over again until the paintings were done. The irony is that in a few months the paintings might be hanging in the million dollar loft apartment of a guy who would probably call the cops if he saw someone getting up on his building.

It’s a weird world where graffiti is used in massive marketing campaigns and being sold in art galleries for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This book is a great place to continue the conversation about vandalism, art and commerce. You can get the book from the Mint&Serf store, and while you are there pick up the SGU #WTC issue because I have a photo in it.

Now click here to check out the pictures from the Mint & Serf Support, Therapy & Instability book release party at Neuehouse.

Bonus: For further reading check out Mickael Broth’s “Gated Community” books where he documents his 10 months in prison for graffiti and his switch to fine art career after he got out.

Last night I hit up the opening of #PPP: None Of Us Is Greater Than All Of Us at Rox Gallery on the Lower East Side. The show was curated by NYC graffiti champs Mint&Surf and featured the work of their crew the Peter Pan Posse and other friends. My next door neighbor and one of my favorite humans Slutlust is a founding #PPP member andd had some work in the show so I hopped in a cab with him and his lady and we headed over the bridge to the show.

It’s not often that I am at an art opening for more than 15 minutes but I stayed at Rox for a few hours. Every time I tried to leave the space another group of people I was excited to see showed up . Plus Rox is a great space and there was a lot of great art on the walls. I don’t want to leave anyone out so here is the huge list of artists involved:

Arab Parrot, Bast, Baron Von Fancy, Bob Waltzer, Cat Marnell, Clayton Patterson, Curtis Kulig, Dirty Shaun, Dylan Kraus, Erik Foss, Harry McNally, Jacuzzi Chris, Lance De Los Reyes, Mark Ferkul, Michael Anderson, Mint&Serf, Norman Seeff, Osvaldo Chance Jimenez, Pablo Power, Peter Sutherland, Pj Monte, Sean Kinney, Wyatt Neumann and Beni Zooted.

On top of that you hat Pablo Power cutting all his hair off in the middle of the show, spraying shaving cream on people and bleeding out the side of his head. It was a pretty good scene. Now I got shit to to so just go look at the photos.

Click here to see all my shots from #PPP: None Of Us Is Greater Than All Of Us at Rox Gallery.

When I was in Vegas last weekend I remembered that last time I was there I had visited noted NYC graffiti artist Love Me aka Curtis Kulig at his pop up studio at the Cosmopolitan hotel. I have no idea how I forgot about these photos for an entire year but I figured I should post them now even though they are unreasonably too late. I dig Curtis’ stuff and he is down with a bunch of my friends so I had to get some #PPP love up on the blog. I don’t really have a lot to say since it was a year ago, but I am always glad to see cool people getting paid money to do whatever the fuck they want. He got some Vegas hotel to pay him a bunch of cash to make his art in a little fishbowl and talk to hotel guests once in a while. It’s pretty great. So shout out to Love Me and #PPP and check out the rest of the photos.

Click here to see all the pictures from my Love Me studio visit from January 2012 at the P3 Studio at the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas.