Has the age old question ‘Where’s the Beef?’ been answered?

Actually, no….’who’s the Beef’ would be more precise.
And the answer would be Nick.

Nick Beef (Great name for a pulp fiction detective) surfaced recently with an answer to the question that many curiosity seekers at the grave site of lee Harvey Oswald have asked.
That question is ‘Who is buried in the plot next to Oswald with a headstone marked ‘NICK BEEF?’ The answer; no one. That’s right, an empty grave.

Nick simply bought the grave site when he found it was available and over 20 years later had it inscribed with his ‘Nom De Plume’. See: NY Times/Nick Beef

But here’s the back story.

Nick Beef, New York City writer and “nonperforming performance artist” with, as he says “a penchant for the morbid” has now revealed himself to the world for who he is; a creative genius who has combined gravestone names into a whole new art form he calls ‘DieKu’.

This is, as they say, a ‘double hit’. There is the enigma that is Nick Beef of Oswald gravesite fame, who is also a talented artist at large. http://www.nickbeefnyc.com

He parlays the Haiku, a short form of traditional Japanese poetry, into new art and adds an element of surprise which every artist worth their salt strives for.

With a simple camera and a bent for the lure of the quietude of a cemetery he prowls the grounds in search of names he can juxtapose to compose lyrical free verse that delights and amazes the reader.

On the cusp of being discovered by the art world as a whole, he has produced this new form and fresh approach by touching a dark space and bringing it to light.

Although he has never done stand-up comedy, the art of DieKu kick starts a laugh in the most mundane of us.

And how did this artist come to our attention? For years he stayed underground and created a ‘buzz’ for his work without revealing himself for love or money.

New Yorkers spotted and appreciated his Dieku postings in subways and on construction walls. Who was this artist? People who became fans of the surreptitiously placed art-form speculated on their origin.

He then surfaced like a breeching whale yearning for the rarified air of brilliant self-promotion to capture our attention right before the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. What timing!