Bits: 06.26.11

José Castrellón, from his series "Priti Baiks"

• Street Use points out a series of photos of highly modified Panamanian "priti baiks" by photographer José Castrellón. Notes Kevin Kelly, "[T]hese guys are too poor to own a car so they soup up their bikes. Note the air horns, normally found on trucks."

• Photographer Brian Ulrich's new monograph is now on press in China and set for a Sept. 30 release. It takes its name from a hand-painted sign Ulrich photographed in the back room of a K-Mart store, one he told me during a 2008 interview is part of the indoctrination that's ubiquitous in corporate retail: Is this place great or what! "It's hilarious to me, because the place looks like a meat locker," he said. "It's definitely a hard sell." It's the first monograph for this Chicago-based winner of a 2009 Guggenheim fellowship (although he's moving to Richmond for a job at Virginia Commonwealth University). Preorder the book at Amazon, or buy it directly later from the Aperture Foundation.

• The lease for the land on which Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty sits has expired, or so says the Utah Department of Natural Resources. The work's owner, the Dia Foundation, says it has "promptly paid every annual Spiral Jetty lease invoice, up to and including one sent out by the Department of Natural Resources in February 2011. Although the Department of Natural Resources deposited Dia’s check for this latest invoice, it subsequently took the position that the invoice had been sent in error." A decision on the lease was expected this past week.

• Minneapolis designers ro/lu bring their project A Simple Chair to Mass MOCA's Night Market (now through Sept. 30), fresh off its showings in town at the Soap Factory and Northern Spark. Via Greg.

• Gothamist: "French graffiti artist JR and the Bronx's Hunts Point Alliance for Children have teamed up to present 'Through A Mother's Eyes,' a community art project that involves members of the neighborhood, through images taken by and of Hunts Point residents themselves."

• After a two-month investigation, Mannhattan resident Joseph Waldo was apprehended by police and charged with felony criminal mischief, among other counts. The crime spree requiring such police attention? He wrote the word "moustache" on the upper lips of people featured on NYC subway ads.

• For Minneapolis Pride weekend, a series of same-sex Craigslist personals for sculptures seeking hookups, including the "full figured hard body," the Father of Waters, Larkin Goldsmith Mead's marble sculpture in City Hall.