Local board kills move to name NYC corner after Beastie Boys
You’ve got to fight for your right to name an NYC street corner after the Beastie Boys -- but that doesn’t mean you’ll win.
A local community board has nixed a plan to name a Lower East Side corner -- famous for its appearance on the Beasties’ album art for “Paul’s Boutique -- after the group. The “Beastie Boys Square” mission was a passion project of local resident LeRoy McCarthy, who wanted to turn the corner of Rivington and Ludlow into a tribute to the group after the 2012 death of member Adam Yauch.
Pitchfork and local site DNA Info noted that McCarthy had gathered more than 200 signatures for a petition since he last presented it to Community Board 3 at a Jan. 14 meeting. But on Tuesday night, the board met again and roundly rejected his proposal by a vote of 24-1. The group also forbade McCarthy from submitting the proposal again for five years.
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While the hypothetical Beastie Boys Square did meet the planning board’s criteria for being named after a deceased figure, chairman David Crane didn’t believe the group had specifically contributed enough to the neighborhood to meet its 15 years of service requirement for namings.
“We have these guidelines to attempt to preserve street co-namings. There are only so many co-namings,” he said, according to DNA Info. “I don’t think it meets the objectives.”
Hip-hop has been a source for other NYC-area public spaces, however. Brooklyn is home to an Adam Yauch Park, and a Queens street corner is named after Run-DMC.
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