Google and Bing aren't my friends today. All I wanted was some clear story about the green Flatbush tree thingy at Flatbush/Empire/Ocean, and danged if I couldn't come up with a single relevant link. Help me out here...Bob Marvin? Where are you when I need you?
Let me guess. As part of some sort of 1970s campaign to re-energize a demoralized business district from Empire on down, some civic group, maybe a local chamber of commerce, commissioned these things to brighten the neighborhood. I get why you'd want to write "Flatbush Avenue" on one of the signs. But another looks blank, like it's original message was scrubbed off. What did it say? I've got a few guesses:
FLATBUSH AVENUE:
"Where everything costs exactly half what it does in Park Slope!"
"You know what they say - Tight pants..."
"Where Wendy's meets Phat Albert"
"Go Tell Aunt Roti"
"Come smell our baking bread"
"A Neighborhood That Used to Be Home to the Brooklyn Dodgers"
"Beauty Begins at the Parlor"
"Abandon all hope ye who enter here"
"Home of the Malbone Street Wreck" (hey, look it up!)
Any info...do tell! And who thinks this thing is due for a rehab, or at the very least, a detox.
4 comments:
I think it marks the Flatbush Avenue entrance of the Botanic Gardens?
Ah, the trees! Our beloved/reviled PLG landmarks! They have been discussed many times. Here's one: http://acrossthepark.typepad.com/atp/2006/04/welcome_to_plg.html
Friend, you take the photos that the world needs to see.
Personally, I feel that a small percentage of every cityscape should be set aside to preserve the heavy lines and blocky shapes and drab tones of architecture dating from 1977 through 1983. Malaise me! Malaise me! And the Flatbush trees are ideal for that purpose.
Thanks--it's nice to be missed. You got the origin of the trees just about right, although I think it was a City Agency, rather than any civic group (The Bklyn. BP's Office, under Howard Golden?)
AFAIK the trees mark the start of Flatbush (as in Town of....) There's a brass strip in the Botanic Garden nearby that does the same thing.
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