Fuck Art Basel. Fuck the galleries and throngs who flock to Miami for a week in December to try to get seen and be noticed. Fuck all that. M&F is a street art blog, and when we visit a city, we don't want to go indoors. And it doesn't matter much to us which gallery is representing who. The true life, and the real art, can, and will, be found on the streets.
So when M&F visited Miami, we were happy to miss all the gallery mayhem of Art Basel. What was left was the art on the streets of Miami, and M&F plunged balls deep into that beautiful mess.
Personally, this vacation means a lot of M&F. Miami is our old former home town. Miami, not Los Angeles, is the place where we first fell in love with the world of street art before there ever was a blog called MELROSEandFAIRFAX, and now returning to the scene where it all started feels like a homecoming of sorts.
In fact, visiting Miami felt like a homecoming, but the visit was also a home away from home. What does that mean? Well, visiting Miami was like visiting an East Coast Los Angeles. M&F has long championed LA's street art scenes as being one of the most active in the world, but we have been in LA so long that it had been a long time since seeing the influence of LA elsewhere. Simply put, LA runs Miami.
LA artists had the most murals (Obey, Risk, & Rime own the city), the biggest mural (Sand One), the most stickers in Miami (Jaber, Aware & Bankrupt Slut), the hottest illegal graffiti bombs (Keoh (?) TDBF & Saye 025 TBD), and nearly every other nook and cranny was filled with LA flavor including artists like Snyder, Merch, Keno, Brega, Errandboy, Maggot, Abcnt, Begr, Rich, Jose, Arbe KOG, Youth Waste, Free Humanity, Above, 2much, Blah, REM, Jrep, Bamp, and many more with LA ties like Space Invader, Love Me, Eddie, Eine, Lister, MQ and many more.
Since it was vacation, M&F did not have weeks to search out every nook and corner like in Los Angeles. Perhaps there were some sections we missed with perhaps a bigger mural or a trove of local art, but M&F did make it through a good selection of the streets and alleyways of the Wynwood Arts District and Miami Beach, and even if we didn't get to everything, there is no doubt that even if it is on the East Coast, LA runs Miami. In fact, as you will see from the pics coming up, Miami felt like East Coast Los Angeles!
Stay tuned to M&F for more exclusive shots of the action of LA artists in Miami . . . and, of course, LA artists in Los Angeles!
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