5

Final Days of Surly

music selection for this post...

SeeqPod - Playable Search
This is a playlist of songs I was especially fond of when me and Surly were in our hayday. Play it loud, play it again.

Summer 2005 - It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I was still living in a converted sewing factory in Greenpoint, I was in the first of back-to-back relationships with women named Lisa, a young politician from Chicago's southside was beginning his rise to the presidency, I was about to take a trip to Ireland and not come back the same. But those are none of the main stories. I had this bike. It was cool because it didn't previously belong to my mom purchased the year I was born, it was cool because a real bike enthusiast sold it to me, it was cool because I loved it and that was important. Surly or "brown bike" was purchased with actual money I was starting to make from my art. It was a significant purchase in that I felt like I actually earned it. I guess I felt like things were coming together for me, which is a feeling I've never been comfortable with. But one can't live with the idea that a flat tire is waiting around the corner... and I certainly didn't. I was like some sort of athletic bohemian riding around Manhattan and Brooklyn playing basketball, installing my art and playing in band practice (practice? we in here talk'n about practice? -*see youtube, search: practice, Iverson). The Surly even provided some foreshadowing as I raced around Prospect Park. I now live on the southside of it and frequently walk up 9th St. to my YMCA and the movie theater. You see, selling the Surly, which I'll get to, conjures all sorts of Greenpoint memories. My Brooklyn life was all north of the Navy Yards, now it's all South of the land of 2005. Even though I kept a studio in Greenpoint preparing for my first solo show (and getting hit by a truck walking across Canal St.), even though my gal's place there was still where I mostly laid my head, I was already gone. I needed a profound change. Not just in geography but the serious stuff, the stuff you don't even know you're about get in the ring with until your about 30. Holly crap I'm 34 now! So here I am today. I'm moving my studio of the last two years from Red Hook - home of I eat lunch at Ikea more than I shop there - to Prospect Heights. I love the Gowanus area. I'm only moving because I need a white box to work in (and a studio that doesn't cost considerably more than my apartment rent).

I'm selling the Surly. I need to make space and I just don't ride it that often. Feel free to turn that in to metaphor.

As of today - November 22nd, I'm going to sell it for $320. It's worth more. If you or a loved one wants it, contact me:
abwexler at mac dot com

Here is an image of the last piece I completed in the Red Hook Studio:

"Some Assembly Required", 2008. 44" x 60". acrylic and paper collage on panel.