Marking
presidential
transition
in Soho
When Aretha Franklin died these RESPECT stick-ons appeared in the Franklin
St. #1 station. So well received, MTA recreated them for the station.
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Owner Roy Ibrahim of Soho’s
Les Bistro Amis looks above his
outdoor seating at the street sign
across Spring St. mystifi ed, “I don’t know
when it happened.”
He refers to the amusedly clever adaptation
of the Thompson Street sign, which
hovers over Ben’s Pizza, now reading:
“Trump gone St.” It just appeared on Jan.
20, Inauguration Day, announcing the
obvious.
Thompson Street is eight blocks long
and that corner is the only one undergoing
an imaginative kind of name change with
only a couple letters transformed. Above
the street name, the former One Way sign
reads: “gone away.” Mid-Inauguration Day
local TV crews took note.
The simple sign is an example of the
creativity of street artist and architectural
photographer Adrian Wilson whose
fi nger is on the pulse of the zeitgeist.
With his spot-on graphic sense, the commonplace
becomes a sign of the times.
His goal is to make people smile. “It’s
about the humor, with a wink in your
eye,” he says.
Wilson has worked his ingenuity in the
The corner of Thompson & Spring Street have (temporarily) been renamed.
In this Sullivan-Thompson Historic District, the street is now “Trumpgone St.
Gone Away”
subways, and there is no defacement — he
uses adhesive stick-ons.
On inauguration day along the same
theme, he transformed one wall in the
Astoria M and J subway station from 46th
St. to “46th Joe.” (Biden being the 46th
president of the U.S. Following the November
presidential election, Biden’s name also
appeared at the station.)
After his trip to that Queens station,
Wilson made his way to Soho—the sign
at the Spring St. corner transformed right
around noon, the time the presidential oath
was taken.
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
In lower Manhattan, denizens may have
seen Wilson’s tribute to Aretha Franklin’s
2018 passing with “RESPECT” stickers in
the #1 Franklin St. subway station. MTA
even took to that, producing more stick-ons
for the platform walls.
The artist pays tribute to many worthy
public fi gures that have died and is quoted
as saying, “I’m trying to give people a more
quirky way of remembering that is not so
solemn!”
One sign over the Bowery read: David
Bowery. The Prince Street station
read: “Prince RIP.” For his RIP to Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, 50th St. station for a
time read: “RU th St.” A tribute to Kobe
Bryant went up on the #7 train platform
at the Bryant Park stop; it read “Kobe
Bryant Park.”
“My dad and two older brothers are
graphic designers,” he says, of not wanting
(completely) to follow the family DNA.
“And, I’m British and we like word puns.”
It adds up to fl air for wordplay, graphics,
skilled Photoshop, and with occasional
animation, he puts his personal spin on a
talent that runs in the family.
“Most of my street work is in the planning,”
he makes clear. This explains his
social media handle @plannedalism, a
take-off on the word vandalism.
More of his work where art cleverly
meets politics can be found on Twitter or
Instagram.
In the ‘hood, Broome Street Bar honored
the presidential transition another way by
hanging festively twisted crepe paper and
infl atable balloons reading 2021 along with
a photo of Biden in their West Broadway
window.
Storefront window of Broome Street Bar, celebrating a new year and a new
administration.
Schneps Media January 28, 2021 13