Street Art Manila : K-street?

Spotted this along A.Rodriguez in Pasig city.  Can’t really make out what it says, but the tag on top seems  to say “K-street 2007″.

Grab bag

grab bag n. Slang A miscellaneous collection.

So, I’ve been having a bit of an NBA card renaissance, what with ebay offering instant access to tons of cheap and relatively rare goodies.  Case in point: Hakeem Olajuwon’s second NBA card:

250 pesos, in near mint to mint condition, to my untrained eye.  Interesting discrepancy, this card actually shows Olajuwon having already played 3 years in the NBA, but this was the only the second card printed with him on it.

Steve Nash RCs, 2 for 120.  What a skinny fucker, and what’s up with the hockey outfit, eh (Yes I know he’s Canadian and that explains it all, I just thought it looked funny)?

The man whose beard led the Golden State Warriors past the number 1 seeded Dallas Mavericks in last year’s playoffs.  4 rookie cards for 140 pesos equals hey not bad.

I also got a grab bag of Glenn Robinson rookie cards and inserts for 150 bucks, none of which are worth even putting up here, despite the Big Dog’s athletic achievements.  You couldn’t buy a quarter pounder value meal with those cards, but what they hey, right?

Street art in Manila

Or specifically, in the UP katipunan area.  I’ve been virtually sitting on a huge pile of pictures taken on my jaunt through UP last holy week that had me taking pictures of every bit of street art I could find.  Apparently there’s a nascent street art scene growing up in Manila, that’s far from being as developed as the grafitti you see in New York but light years better than the amateurish tags seen in the metro when being hiphop was still “in”.  Without further ado, here are some of my favorite artworks.

FF 

This dude calls himself “ff”, and has a thing for gorillas.  I found it hilarious how he painted right over the mmda “art” shapes.  It looks like he’s using the kind of brush you use to paint houses and diupping it liberally into a can of boysen.  Good stuff.  I wonder if the gorilla motif was inspired by bape?

TMTK

Not quite as pretty as the gorilla but just as consistent, TMTK favors furry pink worm/caterpillars that seemingly enter in and out of “black holes”  Nest to FF, he’s probably the most prolific graf artist in the area.  Looks like housepaint as well, but with a smaller brush for the fur.

Clown guy

He/she doesn’t sign his pieces, but there’s at least one graf artist out there who has a preference for clowns.  Obviously he’s never wathed “it”.

Momy Nick

Momy nick likes drawing bear-like creatures.  Very iconic, very t-shirt worthy (idea!).  The top image looks to be spray painted on, while the bottom looks like acrylic latex (aka boysen).

ZTEG

It’s interesting that the scene’s grown enough to have its own griefers, or guys who just shit all over everyone.  ZTEG makes it a point to mess with other graf artist’s artworks, or perhaps it’s a collaboration?  The penis sticking out of momy nick’s bear would have me think otherwise.

Sticker Grafitti

This sticker grafitti intrigued me a lot.  I’d heard a little bit about it before but I had no idea that it was already present here.  It looks like he draws the circles with paint then sticks the cut-out stickers on afterwards.  The watertank piece on the bottom is really quite impressive up close, though it paints over some older grafitti.  On the top image, you can see more of zteg’s handiwork in the form of the blue streaks of paint.

Random stencil art

The Diceman

Hey at least someone misses him

Skulls

Mao (Zedong) is free?

If any of you out there have an interest in street art or art in general, I encourage you to take a walk around UP sometime to take some pictures.  I only hope that this isn’t a fad that’s going to die down soon, as I plan on going back with a much better camera one of these days to take even more pictures.

You can check out the rest of the pictures in my Flickr account here.