An Open Letter to Banksy

Hey Banksy,

Help a neighborhood out. Park Slope needs some street installation cred up in this leafy enclave. You’ve hit the rest – Coney Island, Greenpoint, Sunset Park – now deface the best. But, where, you ask?

Let’s start on Union Street.

 1. Dixon’s Bike Shop. Mural of giant old-timey bicycle, it’s practically a paint-by-numbers for you. Connect the dots, fill in the blanks, bikes not cars. It installs itself!

 2. Conveniently located next door, the venerable Park Slope Food Coop is rife with opportunities. Muppets in the meat case? Papier maché representations of GMOs strung from the ceiling?

 3. Tea Lounge. A sea of laptops, apples all aglow; brick walls; and 2 shitty bathrooms, like a little CBGBs Lite. Your message? Oh, technology! You’re so lame! Why don’t you people put down your devices and talk to each other?

 4. Uncle Louie G’s – A little slice of Bay Ridge right here in PS. They painted over the giant eagle because it didn’t meet the aesthetic of the Euro jeans store (see #11) that just moved in. Ain’t that America? 

 Then head up to the Park.

5. The arch at Grand Army Plaza is just asking for it. Glorifying war! And those columns at the entrance? Might be time for some phallic humor, Banksy. Ready to work blue?

6. The Great Lawn. Rolling hills and uninterrupted expanse of green. You can really stretch out here! It’s our communal backyard, and we revere it, so take it down a peg with your signature irreverent wit.

A little stroll on 7^th Avenue

7. PS 321, the pride of smug public school parents. You could really hit a nerve about separate but unequal in the United States public school system. The rich’s kids get smarter! A mural referencing Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series on the back wall would be a nice touch.

8. The Aerosole Store! Petco! Fucking Subway? Are you kidding me? Corporate takeover, forcing out mom and pop shops! And really, they don’t fit the neighborhood look. Mess ‘em up!

9. Two Boots! A neighborhood family favorite for years. Never recovered from that alligator meat scandal. Do something about Meat Is Murder, or man’s rape of the Everglades

10. I’m giving you this one, Banksy: String a tightrope from Little Things toy shop on the east side of the street to Norman and Jules on the west. Industrial plastic commercial capitalism vs. hand-carved, sustainable wood playthings that don’t wreck your designy décor. And on the tightrope, I’m thinking monkey on a unicycle.

Now wend your way down to Fifth Avenue.

11. The euro jeans store, Mavi, which used to be a nice, seedy check cashing place. Paper the windows with cancelled checks to symbolize how poor people without bank accounts have to go to Sunset Park or some damn place to cash their checks now.

12. Shoe Repair guy. Ye Dusty Olde Curiosity Shoe Repair Shoppe. One of those giant shoes they used to have at old shoe stores, crushing a little shopkeeper would be cute.

And this is just a sampling, Banksy, of how and where Park Slope can meet your is-it-graffiti, is-it-art, is-it-theater, cheekily-subversive-street-installation needs. All within spray-painting distance of several major subway lines.