From 1985 the Fat Boys were hungry bastards up on the downtown Brooklyn Sabarro buffet, but also they were prescient with the whole cityspk thing in the film Krush Groove, featuring a whole slew of up and comers like Russell Simmons, Kurtis Blow, RUN DMC, LL Cool J, UTFO and Sheila E. Actually, a very wicked ass type of flick both if you like Hip Hop or just olden day smutty type NY. And respect goes out to Buffy the human beatbox who died of a heart attack a few years back - originators. He is the one with the sparkly glasses.

And here they are back in the day rapping with Freddy Krueger, testing the waters for a potential film collaboration… Like the man with the severly disfigured wax face says - freddy has got soul now, freddy is urban, he is street… thank god that this is one film that never got beyond the development stage.

an assortment of photos by Mali Kos from our Cityspk.ca site.

 The photo is Cory Booker who is the wonder kind Obama like incumbent mayor of Newark - and the one the  people have attached their hopes to. It is one of the poorest postal codes in the USA. Brick city.

The video is from the artifakts who were coming out of Newark New Jersey in 1991 with this one. On top of rhyming they were also writing all over the train yards and all those things the kids still do today…

This last video is from the film clockers that documented the suffocating project life of Newark in 1995, and as most of you know an instant spike lee classic. Harsh. Based on the 1992 novel by Richard Price who deals almost singularly in cop crime new york grit pulp. You have to love the score by New Orleans’ own jazzman Terrence Blanchard.

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Ratzinger are what the big metal letters left all over Roma say. The title of the project is Anonymous Letter to Ratzinger. Whether they have an axe to grind with the Pope over there in the Vatican City seems unclear as the meaning and makers are unknown. Seems to be just one of those things that just IS. Though presumably this isn’t fan mail, because with the spotty track record of this Pope, that would be even stranger…

You got a couple of long haired chaps riding around the streets of LA in an ice cream truck spreading the good word like it might have been a bus packed with all the good sounds of olden day and future time Jamaica. Black Shakespeare is the name of the thing. Capital D destiny…

Halifax’s own Classified, takes a page from City Spk in his new video, Anybody Listening? which makes use of the song title as urban typography plastered all in different spots on the streets of Toronto.

For those that don’t know, the Farine (flour) Five Roses sign is a towering behemoth of typography that floats over the near city center skyline of Montreal. It is putting it lightly to say that it is a fixture in the identity of the city. It has become more like the very language of the city.

Love it or hate it, the sign’s been part of the Montréal skyline for over sixty years, and sadly probably won’t be around much longer. Local designer and intermedia artist Matt Soar has just launched a participatory art project all about the Farine Five Roses sign at <www.farinefiveroses.ca>.

The Bibilotheque Nationale has an extensive collection of historic imagery, including photos and postcards online. Here are a few store front type from the glory days of Montreal.

Adidas recently launched its Urban Art Guide to Berlin, a slick interactive gallery dedicated to the city’s best urban art and graffiti. Users can also download the free iPhone app which features a Google map interface, city tours and the possibility to find the closest art pieces in your viscinity using the phone’s geo-positionning capability when you are walking around the city. A very cool cousin application of CitySPK that might spread to other cities after the German capital.