Salah Mason and Maceo McNeff (Brooklyn, NY)
Mixed Media on Lightbox, edition of 5, 30”h x 40”w
Mixed Media on Paper, edition of 5, 22”h x 30”w

Please contact the gallery for a larger image.

All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. Whatever it is, you should clean up this city here, because this city here is like an open sewer you know. It’s full of filth and scum. And sometimes I can hardly take it. Whatever-whoever becomes the President should just really clean it up. You know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it, I get headaches it’s so bad, you know…They just never go away you know…It’s like…I think that the President should just clean up this whole mess here. You should just flush it right down the fuckin’ toilet.

- Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver 1976

30 years later the prophecy of a demented Taxi Driver has come true. The gritty streets of urban America have been cleaned up, flushed away and sanitized. Only to be replaced with a Disney vision of a world that doesn’t exist. Crass commercialism, cookie cutter chain stores, and ruthless gentrification have turned the streets of downtown america into an open air mall, complete with artificial atmosphere and overpriced disillusionment. Meanwhile the outlets for our baser instincts are cloaked in shame, and hidden behind closed doors. The streets are cleaner now, but do we live in a better world?

Ways&Means looks back fondly on the days when the darker parts of the human condition had a home on the streets of America. Our Red Light District series is a look back at a place where alcoholic poets, Junkie profits, pimps, hustlers, and women of ill repute could live in a world that reflected the sick beauty of their exsistence. One day no-one will remember what the bad part of town looked like. Through digital collage, illustration, and typography we have created an imaginary image of the streets that died for our sins.

Ways&Means is the creative outlet for Salah Mason and Maceo McNeff. Our portfolio includes graphics and illustration for Mass Appeal Magazine, Crank Yankers, Felix da Housecat, Dos Equis, Nike, and many others. We currently design and produce the Luxury streetwear brand Name Value, and in 2007 will be producing our second clothing line for the Japanese market. Also inn 2007 we will be launching a multi-city Gallery tour in the US and Japan.