MICHAEL JACKSON29
Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, will present a proclamation declaring the day Michael Jackson Day in Brooklyn. The Rev. Al Sharpton will supply the prayer. DJ Spinna will supply the music.On Saturday, thousands are expected to fill the Nethermead meadow in the center of Prospect Park to celebrate Mr. Jackson’s life on what would have been his 51st birthday. The party, originally planned as a block-party-style gathering for 2,000 in Fort Greene Park, was moved to Prospect Park, which is larger, to accommodate a crowd that organizers believe could grow to 10,000.
The free event will be from noon to 5 p.m., rain or shine.
The celebration is being organized by the director Spike Lee, who filmed Mr. Jackson in Brazil for the music video for “They Don’t Care About Us,” a controversial song from Mr. Jackson’s 1995 album, “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.” Mr. Jackson went back into the studio to change some of the words in the song after the album was released, in response to accusations that the lyrics were anti-Semitic.
In an interview this month with The Root, an online magazine on black culture, Mr. Lee said of the party: “It’s going to just be how we do it, Brooklyn style, I’ll leave it at that. It’s going to be a joyous, festive, celebratory party.” He also said: “We’re of the same era. I wanted my Afro to be perfectly round like Michael’s, all that stuff.”
Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department spokesman, said that while the police did not have a precise estimate of how many people would attend, they had suggested moving the party from Fort Greene Park to Prospect Park to better handle a bigger crowd. “It seemed reasonable to anticipate over 2,000, and that it would be more prudent to have a larger venue as a result,” he said.
Tupper Thomas, the administrator of Prospect Park, said the park as a whole, and the meadow in particular, could easily handle 10,000. An annual Halloween event at the Nethermead usually draws about 8,000. “We’ve had events in that location that had up to 40,000 and 50,000,” she said.
Organizers of another event at the park Saturday, a ceremony rededicating the Maryland Monument, which honors Revolutionary War soldiers who fought in the Battle of Brooklyn, said they were not worried about overlap. Their event begins an hour earlier — and is far smaller — than the Jackson party.
One of the elected officials scheduled to speak at the Jackson party is City Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn, whose recent remarks to a reporter that the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station should be renamed or co-named after Mr. Jackson sparked much debate. The music video for Mr. Jackson’s 1987 hit song “Bad” was filmed by Martin Scorsese at the station.
Ms. James said on Thursday that she simply advocated having a plaque placed at the station in honor of the singer, not actually having the station renamed. “I have worked on a lot of issues — education, affordable housing, crime,” she said. “I’ve never received more e-mails than I did as a result of this recommendation.”
Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that New York City Transit, the arm of the authority that operates the subways, prohibits plaques and memorials from being placed in stations. “Regarding naming rights, we are in the process of developing guidelines and protocols to pursue appropriate sponsorship opportunities, but we are not considering naming for memorial purposes,” Mr. Soffin said in a statement on Thursday.
When it comes to eclectic tributes to pop culture, the borough of Brooklyn does not disappoint.
Also on Saturday, fans of the 1979 cult film “The Warriors” will gather on Coney Island to mark the film’s 30th anniversary. The movie, about a New York street gang trying to get from the Bronx to Coney Island while being pursued by rival gangs, captured, in campy fashion, the graffiti-tagged grit of New York in the 1970s and ’80s and later became the basis for a video game by Rockstar Games.
Mr. Jackson and “The Warriors” do have one link, the kind shared by nearly all New Yorkers — the subway. Scenes for the movie were shot in the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station as well.
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