Joy riding, a just act of social practice

[imomus]

We lunched with San Francisco gallerist Chris Perez yesterday at Shiroto Sepia Cafe, run by the Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolution) collective -- slightly less revolutionary than their name implies, they're a group of Koenji secondhand dealers. The food was tasty and incredibly cheap -- just 350 yen for green curry!



Chris mentioned that he'd been to some events that Californian artist Barry McGee had been hosting at the Watarium over the weekend. One detail pricked our ears -- Barry had collected a heap of bikes found abandoned at railway stations, taken them to a bike shop to get them fixed and altered, then left them unlocked outside the Watarium for anyone to use. This radical act of reappropriation fitted right into McGee's street art theme, itself a kind of "amateur revolution" (on Saturday night he was showing slide projections of tagging and graffiti, analysing each illegal scribble as if it were by Leonardo).



So we headed down to the Watarium and, sure enough, there were two unlocked bikes outside. Strange beasts they were too. One was a slim racer with odd curly handlebars and no brakes whatsoever. The other was a weird massive tandem hybrid, a sort of long low drag racer with a wooden surfboard platform at the front. We decided this was the one to take, and climbed aboard.



We wobbled through Harajuku, Aoyama and Shibuya on this thing, turning admiring heads wherever we went. The rack-and-pinion steering took a while to master, and the caged pedals were scary, but we got to the Apple Store in one piece (well, two) and I performed my show, even making an announcement from the stage about the free bikes outside the Watarium.

But when Hisae took some friends round to see the bike where we'd left it, the beast was gone. Some kids from a secondhand clothes store told us the police had come with a guy called Eric, that the museum had reported Barry's art bike missing, and that we were wanted criminals. When I mailed Chris Perez about it, he said we'd taken the wrong bike. "On the West Coast people are calling the new performance art "Social Practice," he added. "I think you've committed a just act of social practice."

Joy riding, social practice, street art, amateur revolution or just plain old crime -- call it what you will, and look out for Wanted posters of Hisae and me outside police stations next to hatchet-faced mugshots of Aum Sect members and petulant deliquent taggers. Sorry, Barry, but next time do remember to lock your amazing bike! What a buzz that beast is to ride!

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"just 350 yen for green curry!"

You have to love Tokyo for its integrity in terms of price and quality when it comes to food. 350 yen is about £1.50.

Here in London, it's a different story. Wagamama for example, will charge you £10 for a bowl of ramen, it's insane when you think that in Tokyo, ramen is a street food you can buy from Ramen stalls for about 500 yen which is £2.50. And I'm aware that the cost of living inflates the price of goods, but Tokyo is just as expensive as London in terms of cost of living... there's no excuse.

Another trend that's picking up here is the American custom of a "service charge" ie. compulsory tipping. It's a shitty, greedy practice where instead of the management paying the serving staff a decent wage exclusing tips, they include the "service charge" into the salary ie. tips are now counted as part of the salary.

In Japan, tipping isn't done at all because the serving staff are expected to provide excellent service as standard, no incentive.

Tipping

[(Anonymous)]

Also, the Govt accepts tipping as part of the minimum wage, so waiters could be paid a good deal less than what is legal in other work, and then have to make it up. That is bloody outrageous.

- Stephen Parkin (not a waiter, by the way).

[(Anonymous)]

"Tokyo is just as expensive as London in terms of cost of living..."

Nonsense!