Ed, aka Shirt King Phade came round to give me his book today. He had some jackets he had painted for a friend’s daughter in his bag. Ed started as a graffiti artist and because of his ‘love of the aerosol’ learned how to use an airbrush and put his art onto clothing.

“I had a shop in Jamiaca Queens that was just dedicated to airbrush art.  All the rappers would come around, each day you never knew who would pop up –  like one day LL Cool J would be there, or Big Daddy Kane, EPMD came all the way from Long Island. They tended to look at me and my team as ‘outfitters’ we weren’t tailors but we were able to put their dreams on their clothes”

Sweet T and Jazzy Joyce wearing a Shirt King sweater NYC 1987

5 Pointz is old school New York – a living changing graffiti museum in Long Island City. Every spare spaces, walls, street lights, doors, dumpsters is covered by art made by legends of the graff world.

On the side streets guys are cleaning the donut carts that serve Wall st types downtown in the morning – oblivious to their sourroundings as they fill trash bags with the last of the unsold donuts  and cofee grounds, and crush the kosher donut company carboard boxes – french and spanish rap music is blaring,  the trains are rattling overhead.

5 Pointz is a hub for graffiti artists from around the world, constantly changing and  also honoring the legends passed like Dondi White.

Scheduled to be demolished to make way for condominiums – please sign a petition to preserve this icon of NYC

Update November 24th 2013 : Early Tuesday, under the cover of night, painters quietly blanketed much of the walls of 5Pointz with whitewash, erasing the work of hundreds and seemingly putting the final nail in the long battle between the building’s owners, who plan to erect luxury apartments, and the artists who fought to save it.

“This is the biggest rag and disrespect in the history of graffiti,” said a teary-eyed Marie Cecile Flaguel, a spokeswoman for the group behind 5Pointz, which sprang like a rainbow from the gray sidewalks near Jackson Avenue in Long Island City. “He’s painted over the work of at least 1,500 artists.”