Vallone Attacks Adidas Graffiti Event
Is this deja-vu? Just like in 2005, when he attempted to stop Marc Ecko’s Chelsea block party which promoted his video game, Getting Up, with graffiti artists painting flat subway car mock-ups, Queens councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. is going after Adidas. As part of their End to End Project they’ve invited seven graffiti artists to paint a fake subway car across from their store.
“Graffiti has nothing to do with sneakers, so basically it’s just another despicable corporation trying to look edgy by promoting a crime in search of profits,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), a longtime anti-graffiti crusader.
Unless he’s making a bigger statement about sneaker companies co-opting graffiti, it’s hard to miss the graffiti/sneaker connection (ie. graffiti covering every shoe in the Adidas collection). And we’re pretty sure Adidas is promoting the sneakers with the crime graffiti artists painting legal panels and not the other way around.
You can see the artists including SILOETTE, SMART, SCIEN, CAN2, ATOM, SKORE, and RIME (who we recently interviewed) painting all day on the northwest corner Houston and Lafayette St.
Update: Adidas one upped Ecko with a three dimensional subway car model, not a plywood cutout.
Adidas press photo and sneaker by Rime.
agree with sentence “Graffiti has nothing to do with sneakers”
By Art of Graffiti on April 11th, 2007 at 9:57 amyer “peter vallone jr” why dont you pull your head out of your uptight rear..get over yourself and mind your own buissness if you even knew what graffiti actually meant to the real artists you’d shut up! so what if it has nothing to do with sneakers its called mix’n'match,trial and error, or trying something new i bet you have never done any of these..get a real life and do your job wich is catching those little fag ass kids dropping tags and leave all the propper graff’artists’ alone shit….
By "street art represent" on April 17th, 2007 at 5:48 pmhah the whole culture is about paint and sneakers, get a life mr Vall oner
By barry on September 4th, 2007 at 12:57 amI disagree with Mr. Vallone’s comment that Graffiti has nothing to do with sneakers.
sneakers are a fashion accessory and fashion has long been taking inspiration from the street and many other areas for that matter, Adidas realizes that the market (predominately the youth of today) has a taste for graffiti and their products, combining the two is just a natural progression.
By Elias Moukarzel on February 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pmTo add to this, of course Adidas’s intentions are purely profitable they are a business and are far from promoting crime, they have brought much wealth to the US.