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May 2, 2011
“Welcome To Brooklyn” Where the Game Is Frivolous Spending On Boondoggle Basketball Arenas- Getting the Image Right
Noticing New York
Just the other day we were out crossing the Pulaski Bridge that connects North Brooklyn to Queens when lo and behold what did we espy but a “Welcome to Brooklyn” sign set up to flog the Forest City Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov Nets basketball arena to the traffic going to and fro!
The sign was doubled-sided so it presented the same “Welcome to Brooklyn” message whether you were coming to or leaving Brooklyn (the shot above is the “Welcome to Brooklyn” you see when leaving Brooklyn- the shot below is what you see when arriving), but we found ourselves transfixed more by a second anomaly of this image that wasn’t gotten right: The picture is the really preposterous old rendering of the arena which by now ought to be discredited in the minds of most people. I am surprised it hasn’t been discarded. . . .
. . . For one thing, the preposterous old rendering used in the billboard still has, in the background, the notorious ghostly “vaportechture” that stands in for the buildings that aren’t being built, while blotting out both the real neighborhood being destroyed and the developer-created parking lots that are likely to be around for decades. The rendering also substituted a whoosh of orange glow for the inevitable slow-moving traffic jams that will surround the arena.
Click through for Michael D.D. White's reflections on this latest Nets ad campaign, and his suggested alternative version.
Posted by eric at May 2, 2011 9:28 PM