the new york print

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[$50.00 Pre-order Deposit via PayPal]

Redrawing one of my earliest “New York” cartoons was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. “I Don’t Have Friends” will be released as a 3-color serigraph later this month, and you can now reserve one now over on the gallery website, or just by clicking on the $50 PayPal deposit button above.

I was looking forward to adding the red and the gray, as I wanted to give it a New York, retro-hipster, Ben Shahn vibe.

Anyone who ever moved to The Big Apple as a young adult will understand what the words in the cartoon mean.

With the original black and white drawing, during my first year in Manhattan, I got it printed onto ordinary business cards, with nothing but my name and e-mail printed on the back (I had no website back then). Then, as I walked around the city, I’d leave the cards everywhere- in bars, in phone boxes- the more random the place, the better.

Small, random street art. Exactly.

I love this drawing. It perfectly captures what I wrote about moving to New York for the first time:

All I had when I first got to Manhat­tan were 2 suit­ca­ses, a cou­ple of card­board boxes full of stuff, a reser­va­tion at the YMCA, and a 10-day free­lance copyw­ri­ting gig at a Mid­town adver­ti­sing agency.

My life for the next cou­ple of weeks was going to work, wal­king around the city, and stag­ge­ring back to the YMCA once the bars clo­sed. Lots of alcohol and cof­fee shops. Lot of weird peo­ple. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simul­ta­neously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat poc­ket.

The free­lance gig tur­ned into a per­ma­nent job. I sta­yed. The first month in New York for a new­co­mer has this cer­tain ama­zing magic about it that is indesc­ri­ba­ble. Incan­des­cent luci­dity. Howe­ver long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recap­ture that fee­ling. Cha­sing Manhat­tan Dra­gon.

Scattering a few thousand business-card images was actually pretty hard going. It took me a couple of weeks to distribute the thousand cards. Much quicker to scatter them over the internet, by far.

From the emails that I received soon after, I quickly learned how many nutjobs there were living in New York. But that’s a story for another time…

That being said, if I lived in New York again, I’d probably the business card street art idea give it a second go. And this time I’d make sure my URL was printed on the back.

So for those friends of mine still lucky to be living in New York City, the way I once did, this print is for you. Hope you like. Rock on.