Sunday around midday I found myself walking northward on avenue A. I had finished having lunch with a friend on 3^rd street and was walking back uptown. Without the slightest hesitation, I slid my headphones into my ears ready to listen to some music and not pay much attention to the usual sites. As I came upon seventh-street I was initially intrigued by the farmers market, but even more so by the huge crowds of people. Walking further on, I noticed tarp on the pavement splattered with paint. No longer lethargic and quite curious, I took my headphones out and looked up to find rows and rows of enormous canvases covering the perimeter of Tompkins Square Park. Sitting on the tarp and engaged in painting were many artists and alongside them spectators like myself. What was this?  As I came to discover, this spectacle was non other then the Howl Festival; a Lower East Side event aimed at creating a strong arts community. Inspired by an Allen Ginsberg poem, the festival was founded in 2003 with the mission of giving artistic expression back to the neighborhood and renewing cultural excitement. In New York it is easy to become jaded by our environments. There is so much going on that it would be difficult to notice every nuance of every street. Many of us hardly even take the time to look at what is around us. I myself, iPod clad, am certainly victim to this. This festival, however, immediately caught my eye. It was a real moment of New York cultural invigoration. The photograph above was my favorite piece of art from the festival. In fact, it was the first piece that made me stop walking and just stare.  Here were these two faces and it appeared to me as if they were the spectators. They were at the festival and you were the painting. The scrunch of their lips also suggested a real smug attitude, perfectly capturing the essence of any New Yorker. The sunglasses were also an interesting touch because it left the character’s identity’s a mystery. It raised the question of identity in New York. In such a large and culturally diverse city, do we ever really know who people are? Above all, the painting really defined the new generation of the Lower East Side. It was no longer predominantly Jewish and tight knit. It was edgy, youthful, somewhat bohemian and mostly impersonal. This painting said it all.