West Chelsea Street Art: alive and ungentrified
Street/fine artist Anthony Lister puts a creepy face on Billy Marks dive Bar ASK ANYONE who lives (as opposed to absentee-invests) in artsy West Chelsea and they'll tell you it's becoming "artless." All but the bluest of blue chip galleries are fleeing to (slightly) more affordable zip codes, no thanks to rampant "condo-mania." Three of my favorites - Lori Bookstein Fine Art , Alexander and Bonin and Andrew Edlin , which formed an artsy little men-art a trois on 10th Ave have been swept away by the winds of gentrification. So it I was thrilled to discover that street artists are alive and doodling, pasting, spraying and "throwing up" (in a good way - I'll explain later) in the nabe, on a tour hosted by "recovering street artist," Patrick Waldo. Recovering from what, Patrick? A fall from a ladder at 2am while tagging an Absolut billboard? "I got caught," said the impossibly tall, millennial-appar