CityBench is a program intended to make more public seating available in the city. I noticed this plaque on one of those benches, outside PS 166 on 35th Avenue in Astoria. Two women’s names appear on what looks to be a professionally produced and affixed piece of metal. I don’t think you could pry this off, at least not easily.
Names on a CityBench
Located outside a school I thought these might be names of students there, or teachers. With no explanatory text as to why these names are here one can only speculate about their meaning. I don’t know about the first name but the second one happens to be that of a Japanese voice actor heard in erotic anime and video games.
After spotting this I kept an eye out for other CityBenches, to see if similar plaques were present. I think I saw 9 or 10 other benches but none of them appeared to bear plaques such as this one.
I wrote to the Department of Transportation to inquire about this. I was curious to know if this was a paid placement in the spirit of the plaques on benches in Central Park. So far I’ve received only automated responses from the DOT, but it sounds like it has been escalated and that I could expect an answer from a human.
A couple of years ago I wrote about the plaques in Central Park, specifically concerning my surprise at discovering how the Madoff family’s names are still there, lingering “In Loving Memory” of a family that had gone as sour as one possibly could. The Madoff plaques are among hundreds in Central Park, where anyone with $10,000 (it used to cost $7500) can have virtually any message they want placed on a bench.
I doubt if the existence of these names on this particular Astoria bench are the result of a similar program, but you do have to wonder who these people are and why their names are here. If it is a descanso of some sort then that would be sad, but a public bench would also be kind of a weird place for such a thing.
With the right equipment I guess you could stick one of these plaques anywhere you want.
