INSULT TO INJURY: GUERRILLA MARKETERS USE DEMOLISHED BLOCK TO PROJECT ADVERTISING

Broadway between 77th and 78th Streets has become a blasted-out landscape of destruction after small businesses were bulldozed to make way for a gleaming new high-rise and CVS. This is the cause of much hand-wringing on the Upper West Side, as the neighborhood is losing small businesses at a rapid clip and now has enough drug stores to fill Madison Square Garden with hair dye and overpriced M&M’s.

After the businesses were forced out by landlord Friedland Properties, the stores sat there vacant for more than a year. As one reader wrote to us: “It’s like some mill town on a Saturday afternoon–five or six store fronts on the UWS with iron grates over the fronts.”

But this summer, the wrecking ball started to swing. The block has gotten real ugly, real fast. And the demolition was just the first indignity. Now, guerrilla marketers are using the walls of buildings behind the site to project ads. Phil Vasquez, who lives nearby and sent us the above photo, said the ads were just another sign of the corporate invasion of the neighborhood. “This makes the invasion of the neighborhood a little too invasive for my liking. Something that aesthetically unpleasing should have to seek community approval.”

We checked in with the community board and got this response from John Martinez there: “We contacted the building super & he is aware of the illegal projection ad. It has happened twice; advertiser is Mercedes Benz. The concierge will contact the super immediately if they show up again & he is going to try & track down the source. I advised him to also call 911 so police can confront the people who are doing the illegal guerrilla advertising.”

Mercedes? Vasquez says he does remember seeing a car ad up there, although the picture above is an ad for makeup company Tresemme. Of course, Mercedes is sponsoring Fashion Week, so maybe that’s the tie-in. We’ve contacted the folks at Fashion Week and will update if we hear back. Check out some pictures below of the post-demolition streetscape at 77th and Broadway, by Gavan Vogler.