#downtown 81

[filmgifs]

“The city looked big and I felt big ‘cause I was part of the landscape. I’m an artist. When you tell people that, they usually say: ‘What’s your medium?’ I usually say: ‘Extra large.’”

Jean-Michel Basquiat Downtown 81 (2000) dir. Edo Bertoglio

[steezylad]

[hiyutekivigil]

downtown '81, 2001

jean-michel basquiat

[uzumaakies]

I ♥️ THE OLD, DILAPIDATED, SLEAZY, SHITHOLE NY YOU SEE IN OLD MOVIES

[spilladabalia]

James White and the Blacks - Sax Maniac (Live - Downtown 81)

[ogmensch]

[rudetuesday]

[herbaklava]

MUBI for the win. ✨

[marcogiovenale]

blonde redhead / dna _ in "downtown 81"

DNA = Arto Lindsay + Ikue Mori + Tim Wright and Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Blonde Redhead” sequence filmed winter ’80/’81 in NYC from the film Downtown 81 (2000).

[shreyaajmani]

Mumbai Art Scene Boosted by Gallery Weekend, New Galleries

The city's stock as a contemporary art hub has risen with the arrival of a new art fair and spaces including Gallery XXL and Nature Morte.

Text by Shreya Ajmani for Ocula.

[kaijuno]

LOUISE JENKINS MERIWETHER

(May 8, 1923 – October 10, 2023)

Louise Jenkins Meriwether, a novelist, essayist, journalist, and social activist, was the only daughter of Marion Lloyd Jenkins and his wife, Julia. Meriwether was born May 8, 1923, in Haverstraw, New York, to parents from South Carolina.

After the 1929 stock market crash, Louise’s family migrated from Haverstraw to New York City. They moved to Brooklyn first and later to Harlem. The third of five children, Louise grew up during the Great Depression, a time that would deeply affect her young life and ultimately influence her as a writer.

Louise Jenkins attended Public School 81 in Harlem and graduated from Central Commercial High School in downtown Manhattan. In the 1950s, she received a B.A. in English from New York University before meeting and marrying Angelo Meriwether, a Los Angeles teacher. Although this marriage and later marriage to Earle Howe ended in divorce, Louise continued to use the Meriwether name. In 1965, Louise earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her first book, Daddy Was a Number Runner, a fictional account of the economic devastation of Harlem in the Great Depression, appeared in 1970 as the first novel to emerge from the Watts Writers’ Workshop.

The circumstances surrounding this photo are largely unnatributed to larger context but some citation indicates that Jenkins-Merriwether was being questioned by police at a protest.

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓

Hi!

81 for 🐓:

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The pond where he used to ice skate. The library. His elementary school. It’s all still there. And he is a stranger to it. Which… Is for the best. It’s the way he’s meant to be, he thinks. He never belonged here. 

He doesn’t want to belong here, is the thing. In Hershey, Pennsylvania. A small tourist city. A place you pass through. Not where most people dream of ending up, unless they’re really into chocolate. And Buck knows he doesn’t want to be here in any way, shape, or form. And yet… It stings? It hurts him, just a little. It hurts him that he’s nothing here. It’s so much of his pain, and he didn’t even leave a scratch on it in return. 

He wonders if, decades from now, he’ll have left an impression anywhere. Will anyone think he’s the love of their life? Will he have kids that love him? Will he just be someone Eddie used to know? Somehow, that one hurts the most. Maybe that’s just the pain of proximity. 

Buck continues walking in the dark and the light snow until he makes it to downtown. His nose and feet are cold. His breath puffs around him. But he doesn’t feel like panicking anymore. He doesn’t feel like crying. The cold air has left him as numb as the tips of his fingers. He’s just gotta keep walking. 

Eventually, he gets hungry. He missed dinner. And he certainly won’t be back at an appropriate dinner hour. So he slips into a pub he doesn’t recognize. Something built since he left. Somewhere unfamiliar. He doesn’t want any memories with his dinner. 

It happens while he’s waiting to be seated. Something he doesn’t expect at all. Mostly because, honestly, he’d assumed everyone had forgotten about him. Apparently, he’s wrong.

“Evan?” A feminine voice asks from off to the side of him. “Evan Buckley?”

He turns to the side, to see a woman his age with auburn hair and very prominent eye makeup walking towards him from the pub bathrooms. It takes him a minute to recognize her. There’s over a decade of distance between them. But he places her. 

“Miranda?” He asks. “Miranda Fraiser?”

“It really is you,” she grins. “Wow. I mean, who else would have that birthmark?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, it’s kind of a dead giveaway, isn’t it?”

“Just a little,” she agrees. “But, Evan, this is crazy! You’re in Hershey!”

“Just for the holidays,” he admits. 

He and Miranda stare at each other for a second, and in that second, Buck is thrown back into the past. She was his first serious girlfriend in high school. He had really loved her, once. Or, what he thought was love. Teenage puppy love. It was that sort of classic high school story. The one he thought meant it was supposed to last. Football player and cheerleader. She was in the grade above him. She’d left for school, broken up. She wanted a college boyfriend. He’d been heartbroken. 

“Um, are you here with anyone?” Miranda asks. 

He shakes his head. “Nah, just on a walk and stopped to grab a bite.”

“Do you want to join our table?” She asks. “It’s all people you know. It’d be nice to catch up. Hear more about your life. You’re sort of a mystery around here, Evan.”

A mystery? Him? What did he ever do that was mysterious? But… Isn’t that sort of flattering? Maybe… Maybe that would be good. He thinks he’s cooler now than he was in school.

“I’d like that,” he says. “Thank you, Miranda.”

Her green eyes practically glitter.

[steezylad]

[hiyutekivigil]

jean-michel basquiat

[annoyincommander]

Jean-Michel Basquiat in the film Downtown 81

[artnlife2]

Jean-Michel Basquiat filming DOWNTOWN 81....