Noun. m. 

Action of stealing a music video, an audiovisual work, even before the artist asked for itself, ordered, undertook, realized and even thought about it.

A crew of masked graf heads show Jay-Z and Kanye West what’s really hood in Paris, with their take on the popular “Watch the Throne” song. Dope.

Crack the surface is the first in a series of short documentaries focusing on the culture of Urban Exploring.

Kidult might not need an introduction for many, allthough I reckon for some he might be new. He has become an infamous (yet rec­og­nized) artist mainly because of his actions targetting several high end luxury brands’ stores (most recently Supreme in New York), which he considers ‘hypocritical in a society that predominantly lives under the poverty level’.

A while back the French graffiti artist released ‘ILLEGALIZE GRAFFITI‘, a video which documents his controversial activities in the streets of Paris & abroad. “Angered and frus­trated by the sud­den ram­pant com­mer­cial­iza­tion of graf­fiti into the main­stream, French street artist Kidult has taken to the streets of Paris to remind peo­ple of the impor­tance of street art as a counter-culture move­ment.”

We’ve mentioned this one before, but fixed gears keep on turnin’ and right now we got the full feature which has clearly turned out to become a nice piece documenting the trip from London to Paris which 10 riders took on as a challenge in 2009 in order to meet Lance Armstrong as the Tour De France came to a close. It takes a while to load in vimeo, so be patient

I’ve always had massive respect for people like Ken Block, someone who started up his own company and took it global while having a lot of fun. Tony Hawk also fits in the list, amongst many others. They’re those entrepreneurs that inspire, a businessman first and an action sportsman second. Mental cases, not afraid to switch the board room for an E.R. every once in a while. You get my grasp.

One of the essential aspects that brought Ken to his current level is the fact he loves to show off his mad driving skills. Its these skills he has lately been showing off while driving a good old Ford Fiesta We mentioned the first clip to promote his new ride already a while back, but thought we ought to make a little round-up as the second one was released earlier this week.

Part 1, which was fittingly called The Music Video Infomercial, features OOTB favorites The Cool Kids performing an original track “Clicking”.

Part 2 was  shot in France, at l’Autodrome de Linas, which is a 1.58 mile oval race track. Built way back in 1924 it has banks at a 51 degree angle, more than double the standard incline of your average NASCAR racing tracks.

Bare in mind that the previous gymkhana videos have been viewed by more than 70 million viewers worldwide. That’s massive and an advertisers wet dream. Out.

So we were at Offf couple of weeks ago as you might have read a couple of weeks back overhere and here. Plowing through the rss reader I came across the following, a nifty little montage made by the guys from Skill Lab (unknow untill date). Thanks for that. Out.

Captain’s log, Saturday 26th June. Returning from Offf 2010 in Paris. Thalys is on time. Mission accomplished.

Wednesday – Check-in for a day in the Sun

Travelled a day earlier to Paris as I had some spots & shops I had been meaning to visit for a while. This meant an early wake-up call in order to catch the Thalys. The call of sneaker, book, … stores & great street art was loud. I could smell it in the air

Arriving in Paris we first headed to our shelter: Hidden Hotel. One of the people behind this concept lodging was so kind to invite us for a stay in their great little hotel while in Paris. Its located in the heart of Paris, a small side street, just 800m or so from the Arc de Triomphe. I can only recommend a stay as its something I had never seen before. I recon I might right a more indepth review on it one of these days

Once we dropped of our lugage and put on some better clothing (hot as hell in Paris passed days) we were offf for some sightseeing and urban discoveries. You can find some pictures overhere and yes, I took way to little pics this time

Thursday – Queuing for beginners

Two hours! Deux heures! Dos whatever! Yes, the amount of time we spent queuing in the shade/sun that Thursday morning. Boring as hell by the way and the reason we missed the opening note But no worries as we were in!

In order to kick offf in style I suggest you have a look at the great opening credits. It gives you an overview of who we saw come by.

OFFF Paris 2010 Titles from OFFF on Vimeo.

Media Temple Animation from (HKI)™ HelloHikimori™ on Vimeo.

HELLOHIKIMORI was the first to really kick off the cool stuff for us. Warming up I guess as we had to get into the right set of mind for the next few days.

I was also looking forward to seeing the guys from H5, mentioned their Oscar winning Logorama before, but heard they chickened out I think they might just have got stuck in Cannes with the train strike which was going on or something else. Too bad they couldn’t continue. Early lunch so!

Craig Ward drew our attention right from the start after a long break in the sun. I was intrigued by his bizarre and beautiful typeface experiments. Check out his site Words Are Pictures to see and learn more, including some really impressive letterpress illustrations.

In his presentation, Craig demonstrated his continuing education in typography while tracing his evolution from designer to typographer to story teller. Fancy words to state he does cool stuff with lettering

Dixon Baxi followed in what I call a promo talk. Hey lets show another showreel and then will show another one. Followed by ooohs & aaahs! Or not. Mainly different idents they did for some television stations, … But nice work to say the least and great entertainment.

DixonBaxi | Five ‘Food Chain’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

DixonBaxi | Five USA ‘Eye Contact’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

We Walk from Christopher Hewitt on Vimeo.

The guys did end with We Walk, which is a short film that stumbles into the journey of a young girl desperate to leave the city in search of isolation and in turn, sleep. Shot in LA and Palm Springs, the film is based on a new poem by Writer, Brett Darling.

Later on we got to see Marc & Sara from Wooster Collective take the stage. Great talk for a fascinated crowd. A crowd that does not follow their blog/site as I had seen everyting they showed us previously I bet they got a new following after this.

They followed what I like to call one prick & 3 French guys (Neville Brody, the British graphic designer together with the people from Bazooka). Some old school fellas who were going to set us young kids straight. They taught they could shock us with ‘pornoghraphic images’ … #fail & out of luck guys. You all get the figurative ball sack as you sucked monkey balls.

Just headed on out from there so. Enough is enough

Stay tuned though as tomorrow morning part II with some stuff that’s really worth a view & read. My sincere apologies if its all a bit chaotic but there really is too much stuff to share Out.

It has been/will be our main theme the passed days: Paris, the city of lights. Not being blinded by these lights I kept my eyes open. Quick overview of what we saw before posting the Offf report:

fixies & lots of other bikes in all shapes and sizes

cybergoths & even a pirate in the metro

blipstaz, hipsters & further evolved tectonic kids

lots of flourescent stuff (laces, clothes, nail polish, …)

girls sporting an androgynous look

oversized headphones x1000 (way more than in BE)

grannies who think they’re 21 year old spring chickens (simply nasty)

strange shoes, more strange shoes & sneakers

QR-code stickers on traffic signs, rain pipes, …

(cheap/knock-off) Ray Bans everywhere, in all colours imaginable

Besides this all we also spotted some art here and there. The city mainly exists of shitty tags which are in your face everywhere but once every so many many spots you find some real gems. Took way to little pictures this time around and will have to make that up next trip. Out.

All other pictures can be found overhere.

I am in Paris b*tches! Capital of the Frenchies & fashion some say. I am here for the OFFF Festival, which starts tomorow, but I already told you about it Out.

Soon we will be Offf. Yes, you read it right. No spelling mistake going on here as we are talking about the OFFF Festival which this year will be taking place in Paris the last weekend of June and a bit the days before.

I wanted to attend last years edition in Portugal, but a last minute setback meant I had to cancel. Anyways, this year I will be making it and in good company as I heard several tweeps will be joining in amongst the international crowd. Hope to meet some great people there and also hope Ms Bambi still makes it back on time from the US or I will have to find a last minute replacement travel buddy.

Prep yourselves, as upon return I will be sharing experiences, great stuff we I saw, … In the meantime, if you have any suggestions on what to do/go see in Paris when I am offf duty just drop it in de suggestion box below Out.

Anyone who has been following me for a while should have picked up somehting about Roa before. I blogged about his work when I visited Doel last year for instance. I mean, his work is marvelous, plain awesomeness, if you ask me and many others, and you have definitely seen pieces of him throughout several cities. The style & technique of this Ghent-based spray-can handler is also so different. Layer upon layer, black, white, grey, black, black,  bit more grey, … Hard to explain (definitely if you are a nitwit like myself) but I suggest you take a look at following time-lapse to get an idea of how it works. All I can say is that Roa is way to modest when it comes to recognizing his talent.

I have known (about) Roa ever since I had the pleasure to meet him at an event I organized almost 2 years back. Its since that day I was fascinated by his work and always wanted to get a piece done by him. An honor I must say as he does not really like to place pieces privately indoors on one hand and on the other his work often does not fit the atmosphere. Surprisingly he was up for it and after having spent some hours talking with Roa I decided not to write a whole lot about it and let the piece speak for itself …

A finished piece. Signed, Roa. Out.

PS: Whoever wants to enjoy it in all its glory can always drop on by!