Painted high on the brick wall of a building on Broadway and Waverly (NoHo), visible only from the roof deck of my friend’s building, is a huge, faded 50s Luna Park advertisement. Once visible from the street, it has long fallen into disuse as taller buildings rose up around it, and its sequestered location now makes it more of a public art piece. It speaks to me of the post-WW2 boom in America and the emerging middle class, and I can’t help but imagine the semi-mythical suburban American cookie-cutter dream family driving down Broadway in a new Chevrolet and seeing the ad. Nauseatingly cliché, of course, but it makes me imagine them down at the Luna Park on a family vacation.
Simon Plutser-Sarno
