On the Hoyt-Schermerhorn-Jackson proposal

Martin Scorsese directed the video for Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop.

If City Council Member Letitia James gets her way, the IND station at Hoyt-Schermerhorn would soon add Michael Jackson to its moniker. As a way to honor the late King of Pop, James wants the MTA to commemorate the station in which Martin Scorscese and Jackson directed his 1987 video for the song Bad.

The New York Post first reported this story and the MTA’s subsequent rejection of James’ proposal this morning. But even a “no” from the transit authority hasn’t stopped James from seeking the spotlight. In an interview with NBC New York, she further expounded on her idea.

“After his death, I had heard about this, and I had approached them, and they told me basically to beat it,” she told NBC New York (Get it? Beat it? Clever!). “A lot of people were totally unaware,” she said, of the fact that Hoyt-Schermerhorn served as the staging ground for this video.

To avoid sounding as though she wanted to capitalize too much on Jackson’s untimely death, James focused on the tourism angle. “There’s a lot of trivia in the subway,” she said. “I think one of the ways to attract more people into the subway is to have more trivia, that so-and-so lived here, or that this movie was filmed here. I think the tourists would like it and I think that New Yorkers would like it, and I know Brooklynites would love it.”

You know what else would attract more people into the subways? Proper investment in maintenance and service so that the MTA can run newer trains more frequently through well-maintained tracks and tunnels. But I digress.

For their part, the MTA stressed its own naming scheme as one that would not support sticking Jackson’s name on the station. According to the Post’s sources, naming stations after people “could confuse riders.” The purpose of subway names, after all, is to provide geographic identifiers. Even the Barclays Center naming rights deal accomplishes that end as the Barclays Center will be located above the station at Atlantic Ave./Pacific St.

James says she’ll try to present the MTA with a petition in support of at least a plaque noting that Jackson filmed the video at this unique six-track station. To that end, what does the MTA have to lose? In fact, a series of plaques throughout the subway system commemorating movies, music videos or other unique bits of subway trivia and minutiae could add some entertainment to an otherwise mundane underground life. Station names shouldn’t adopt individuals because then we would wind up with the Mayor Bloomberg 77th St. stop on the East Side, but history and character should be embraced.