Posts Tagged ‘April 2006’
Conducting Lightning
Conducting Lightning

Text by Matthew Nestel For his annual show at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Brian Chippendale, madman drummer of the two-piece Lightning Bolt, stagedhimself on a second-story rooftop, tossing candy to onlookers below. Soon he pulled out a heavy inventory of road-kill and gave it the heave-ho. When it hit, even the crystallized […]

Ginger Lychee Gimlet
Ginger Lychee Gimlet

Ginger Lychee Gimlet By Christopher Nur For 7,000 years, the Chinese have celebrated the medicinal properties of ginger and its ability to cleanse and warm the body. Duly taking note, ginger devotees are amassing in this country by the day. How better to usher in Spring and good health with the snappy taste of a […]

The Street, C’est Chic
The Street, C'est Chic

No matter how fierce your outfit, how rarefied your game or how brilliant your dance moves, at a certain point in the evening you realize you’re either going to hook up or give up. For the Street Issue, SOMA has devoted our nightlife prowess to scouring the best places to drink, dine and mingle, followed […]

Beyond the Gritty Streets
Beyond the Gritty Streets

Text by Franklin Melendez Visceral, raw, combative – these are the terms that dominate our concept of viable “street art.” Whether it’s the guerilla tactics of KAWS or the defiant gratuitousness of Larry Clark, street’s encounter with art seems inextricable from an incessant drive to shake up the status quo. This aesthetic of transgression has […]

Layin’ Down Tracks with the Father of Hip Hop
Layin’ Down Tracks with the Father of Hip Hop

Text by Patrick Knowles Photography by Ruvan Few artists have had a greater cultural impact and influence in contemporary music than the “Father of Hip Hop,” Kool Herc. The inspiration he found as a young man in the avenues between neighborhoods helped him to create the current soundtracks that resonate from any concrete city today. […]

Surveillance as Lover and Art
Surveillance as Lover and Art

Text by Scott Indrisek We are surrounded by webs of information and surveillance – databases, crime cameras, entire hidden matrixes of observation and recording. While some may choose to loudly protest the status quo as an invasion of civil liberties, others are taking subtler approaches, tweaking and provoking the system in a way that exposes […]

Ciudad Sangre
Ciudad Sangre

Text by Gabriel Leif Bellman Photography by Ruvan Like bees in a hive altering their wings to fit the wax, urban low-fliers buzz to the beat of their surroundings. From the intrinsically collective call-and-response wisdom of the classic DJ Kool party record announcing, “Fuck it, I ain’t from Philly, but I don’t give a fuck […]

Film Reviews
Film Reviews

Our Brand Is Crisis Directed by Rachel Boynton Plenty of documentaries have captured the do-or-die tactics of high-pressure political campaigns, yet something about Our Brand Is Crisis – which highlights the exporting of our American political machine to Bolivia – is more jarring and alarming than its homebound counterparts. Perhaps it has something to do […]

The Moral World of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Moral World of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Text by Hannah Eves It’s a rare honor for a director to win multiple Palmes d’Or, the highest prize for a film competing at that grande dame of foreign film celebrity, the Cannes Film Festival. Yet after winning with 1999’s Rosetta, Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne joined a list of film luminaries (including Francis […]

Art School Confidential
Art School Confidential

Text by Steven Snyder He has created worlds this unusual before – lairs of the bizarre, the wacky, the cynical and the angry. But director Terry Zwigoff has never before filmed his dreamscapes from the eyes of someone who didn’t embrace the low-key, low-energy and low-brow ways standard in Zwigoff’s films. Just consider his repertoire. […]

When Buscemi Reigns, He Pours
When Buscemi Reigns, He Pours

Text by Mila Zuo Steve Buscemi. Nearly a household name, but only a few fans could name every single contribution he’s made to theater, film and television. To say that the “Indie King” (as doting fans on the Internet call him) has carved out a prolific career would be a vast understatement – but for […]

Rolling the Dice with PJ Ransone
Rolling the Dice with PJ Ransone

PJ Ransone wears Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane plaid sleeveless shirt, black tie, suspenders and black pants Cloak black striped shirt and gray jacket Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane suit, shirt and tie Text by Patrick Knowles Photographs by Brooke Nipar SOMA: So what’s with your “No Dice” tattoo? PJ Ransone: I have these two […]

Street Pulse: Tokyo A Go-Go
Street Pulse: Tokyo A Go-Go

Ohiogozaimas! from the streets of Tokyo, fashion capital of the East. Kids from Tokyo take the streets seriously – it’s the concrete runway to some of the most eccentric styles in the world and American pop stars duly take note. SOMA stops fashion forward Tokyoites to hear what they have to say about city life and […]

CASTING AGENTS
CASTING AGENTS

Text by Robyn Dutra It’s a familiar story in the cultural milieu called “downtown New York.” Two guys who “do nothing else professionally” start a fashion line from their digs on the Lower East Side. They begin with T-shirts and sweatshirts, colored and distressed by hand, emblazoned with images that “tell a story of past […]

The New Bohemian South of the Border
The New Bohemian South of the Border

Text by Heather Bradley Mexico City, like a brilliant but misunderstood teenager, often gets a bad rap. It’s polluted, there’s crime, it’s too hot, too cold, too inland or too expensive. While the accuracy of these impressions vary wildly by neighborhood, season and the individual’s perspective, none of them apply at the Condesa DF, a […]

Berlin
Berlin

Text by Alessandra Mattanza For many, Berlin has become the architectural capital of the world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall it has been an immense, continual, open construction site, substituting rubble and empty spaces with adventurous, futuristic constructions of glass and steel and other whimsical experiments, with the old historic buildings safely guarded […]

Jazz Up Your Ride
Jazz Up Your Ride

Text by Robin Liss If you prefer the highways to the sidewalks and spend too many hours of your life choking on someone else’s exhaust on your way to work, then it’s time to add a little tech to brighten your drive. These gizmos won’t speed up your commute (hold your breath for those hovercrafts), […]

Orchestrated Chaos
Orchestrated Chaos

Text by Nora Ballard Snow fell in San Francisco on Valentine’s Day. For approximately 30 minutes after 6 p.m., the white stuff came down in Justin Herman Plaza. However, a closer look revealed the fat flakes were in fact goose feathers, the result of a massive pillow-fight organized by an alternative flash mob. About 1,000 […]

B.I.K.E.
B.I.K.E.

Text by David S. Hirschman In slow motion through the fog of grainy night-footage, a girl named Alison races on her bicycle toward another girl as a crowd cheers on the curb in a new documentary called B.I.K.E. Predictably, the two collide roughly and are thrown to the blacktop. When the ambulance arrives a few […]

Grayti in the Heart of Sao Paulo
Grayti in the Heart of Sao Paulo

Text by Matthew Vree So, graffiti has gone mainstream. Companies ranging from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to MSN and Sony have latched on and sucked much of the rebellion from the formerly underground art movement, turning the vast majority of it into cultural cliché. However, true aficionados are finding inspiration and innovation in a city that […]

Nieves
Nieves

Text by Mila Zuo The zine is perhaps the last breath of non-commercial DIY sincerity in the world of oversaturated pop literature. Anyone can make one, and attributes that lofty publishers would consider flaws (asymmetry, misspelling, general misuse of grammar and all things linguistic) are revered and treasured in the lo-fi publishing world. And to […]

Documenting the Parisian Ghettoes
Documenting the Parisian Ghettoes

Text by Anneloes van Gaalen Long before the global media decided to turn their attention on the Paris ghettoes following the riots last fall, French photographer and street artist JR was already working in the desolate urban spaces of the French capital. The streets are JR’s gallery and source of inspiration, as he takes photos […]

From The Streets to the Surf
From The Streets to the Surf

Text by Fiona Killacky Khayelitsha is one of the world’s poorest areas. Just outside central Cape Town in South Africa, it houses a township of desolate, poverty-stricken black South Africans struggling for survival with little access to education, employment and healthcare. Khayelitsha is also home to the first black South African surfer to win the […]

Andrew W.K.
Andrew W.K.

photograph by Ruvan The image that Andrew W.K. fosters among the general public who glance once at his album covers (Andrew W.K. with menacing scowl; Andrew W.K. with blood streaming down his face) may consist of sophomoric adjectives: hard-partying, sleazy, tough-guy. But beneath the sweaty and grimy surface lurks a preternaturally articulate and well-grounded fellow […]


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