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This False Memory has an
interesting story. I had heard about this sign from my friend Linda
Bahoritsch who lives around the block from it. It is the winter of 2002.
I’m standing on West 107th and Broadway, peering down an alleyway
trying to figure out how to get the best photograph of this fading sign
through a chain link fence. There was snow on the ground and a huge
dumpster was blocking the view. Nearby I saw a police barricade which
I quickly dismantled from its horse and started shoving under the fence
to move the dumpster away from my nostalgic subject. Vincenzo waited
patiently in the car. When the dumpster was pushed far enough away from
my line of focus, I wedged the blue wooden plank under one of the casters
so it wouldn’t roll back into view.
At this point, a Puerto Rican building superintendent
from a nearby six story walkup shouted out to me, “Great thing
what you are doing. That’s history!” He obviously figured
out my plan. Almost immediately afterwards, an erudite Upper-West Side
Jewish woman in her late fifties exclaimed:
“It’s a fake. They painted
it a couple of years ago for that movie about Orson Welles- what was
his name again? You know him- Susan Sarandon’s husband? Oh yeah-
Tom Robbins. No Tim! Yeah. What the hell was the name of that movie
again? The Hand That Rocks?… no, no, THE CRADLE WILL ROCK! That’s
it. Yeah. It’s a fake. But you may as well take a picture of it
anyway. They’re tearing the building down next week.”
Hence- the false memory.
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