Happy Park(ing) Day

Today is International Park(ing) Day, when anti-car activists in 140 countries transform urban parking spaces into mini-parks, lounges, playgrounds, and gardens. NYC apparently turns a blind eye to the event and Gothamist has some photos of last year's installations as well as a map for finding this year's "parks." It will not surprise you to learn that Park(ing) Day got its start in San Francisco.

Burning Man Sells Out

For the first time in the long-running event's history, tickets to this year's Burning Man have sold out.

Shortly after tickets started selling at the fastest pace ever on Jan. 20, officials with Black Rock City LLC, the SF-based company that staged Burning Man in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, privately warned that they may sell out this year. The event, which last year peaked at almost 52,000 attendees, is limited by its permits with the US Bureau of Land Management and BRC's own desire to control its ever-growing size. A couple months ago, the company announced that tickets would not be available at the gate (which had happened only once before, in 2008) and urged burners to get their tickets because it could sell out. Then, over the weekend, that's what happened. "This is new territory," BRC board member Marian Goodell told the Guardian, noting that its BLM permit (which is up for renegotiation after this year's event) calls for capping the population at last year's level. "If we didn't have the BLM permit restrictions, we could manage an increased population."

This year is the 25th anniversary of Burning Man. When I was younger, I used to think about going every year. Now, I can't imagine enduring the discomfort.

NEW YORK: Conceptual Artist Tobias Wong Commits Suicide At Age 35

Openly gay conceptual artist and notorious art prankster Tobi Wong committed suicide on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 35.

Mr. Wong first came to the attention of the design press in 2001 when he turned a Philippe Starck Bubble Club chair into a lamp, softly glowing from within. Adding spice to the stunt, “This Is a Lamp” was shown the night before the actual Starck chair was presented to the public for the first time. A provocateur by nature, Mr. Wong operated at the fringes of the traditional design world, creating objects like a stack of 100 $1 bills, bound in peelable glue like a notepad; a gold-plated McDonalds coffee stirrer (a riff on the company’s plastic version that was apparently popular among drug users before being withdrawn); and an engagement ring with the diamond mounted upside down, so that the wearer could use it to scratch graffiti. “As time went on his work became more and more ironic, sarcastic and pointed,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Architecture and Design. “He had an enfant terrible style of design that was very fresh in New York. Today you see all sorts of people doing conceptual design, but he was one of the first.”

You can find a collection of Wong's most famous pieces here.

Olafur Eliasson (The Milli Remix)

Readers of this here website thingy and all New Yorkers know that Danish conceptual artist Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls installations along the East River have been met with the collective yawn of eight million people - and not a little bit of scorn and derision. So here's a couple of "rappers" giving voice to the massively ego-d Eliasson's reciprocative "fuck you" to Gotham. Give the clip at least a minute to grow on you, there are some damn funny and incredibly filthy rhymes. Besides, when was the last time you heard a rap song that name checked Frank Gehry, Cristo, and Hans Christian Anderson?

Best bit:
Nothing? No flowers? No cards? No thanks?
I should Cloverfield your shit with both of Denmark's tanks.