Knit Picking

Parking meters wearing leg warmers…that’s all I could think of when I saw this “urban art project” Saturday on Montague St. in Brooklyn Heights.

The project was conceived by the executive director of the Montague Street BID (Business Improvement District), Chelsea Mauldin (great name!), who then commissioned the project through an international “knitter” named Magda Sayeg. They sent out specifications (the sleeves are really just long rectangles wrapped around the meter poles) to, well, I’m not sure to whom…but they got responses from volunteers from as far away as San Francisco, Paris and Santiago, Chile.

The installation, called simply “69 Meters,” lines both sides of the street for its short length (three or four blocks) and, strangely, they are easy to miss. I had read about them in The New York Times (who called them, not very seriously I suspect, “parking meter tea cozies”) so I was paying attention but I noticed that the majority of passersby did just that; that is, passing by without really registering their presence. I’m not surprised by this because there really isn’t much to look at (and they kind of blend in with parked cars) and I’m not exactly thrilled by the “artistry.” They are simply knitted sleeves of yarn, some brightly colored; some not so much, and I suppose they are supposed to be “charming” in sort-of a homemade way. Well, perhaps they are to some people. Me, I’d rather see waterfalls in the East River and gigantic erector sets at Rockefeller Center.