May 1, 2006
World's Fair Redux?
Could there be another World's Fair coming to Flushing-Meadows? The Bureau of International Exhibitions has reportedly asked New York City if it'd be interested in hosting a fair in 2012 or 2015. The Flushing Meadows Corona Park World's Fair Association is very enthusiastic about the idea, with its president David Oats explaining,
"The U.S. hasn't had a fair in two decades. Since they [the committee] opened the door, we felt we had an obligation to look into this seriously." The FMCPWFA is working on the proposal, with the Willets Point junkyards as the base. But there are some roadblocks, namely how the U.S. ended its membership with the BIE in 2001 and that Mayor Bloomberg, and then President Bush, would have to support the effort.
Would having another World's Fair leave of us with cool, if very dated structures that inspire films and rap videos? If it's a way to revitalize parts of Queens, then it's definitely worth a shot...the next step would be about making it easier to get there. And there's Peace Through Understanding, "New York World's Fair Community."
Photograph from Triborough on Flickr
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We should have a permanent World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, with part featuring recreations of the most notable exhibits/structures from the '39/'40 and '64/'65 fairs and the rest given over to forward-looking things.
That would help revitalize this section of Queens. (Perpetual Tourist Dollars)
Flushing Meadows looks like an Astroturfed parking lot, and it's in Queens. A world's fair ain't gonna be enough.
Flushing Meadows looks like an Astroturfed parking lot now.
Have you ever seen pictures of the previous fairs? That's where they were held.
What do you think people are talking about? Putting up a few carny rides in the existing park?
"We're on Award Tour, with Muhammad my man/Goin' each & everywhere with a mic in our hand..."
As someone who would have loved to gone to the 1939 and 1964 fairs, but alas was born too late I love the idea of a new one. I really love Andrew J. Lederer's idea of a permanent World's Fair in Flushing Meadows with recreations of the old fair's main attractions.
One problem I do see in any new worlds fair is that there is that Robert Moses is dead and there are only greedy visionless idiots like Larry Silverstein and Bruce Ratner out there.
Here's the cover of the NY subway map during the '64 World's Fair:
http://andrewjlederer.com/1964arrowsmaller.jpg
(from nycsubway.org)
When was the last time a World's Fair was relevant or interesting?
I found this great image that I thought would be of interest to people reading this post but, you know, when you post a link here, they check it out before allowing or disallowing it and, for some reason, this one didn't make the cut.
I also uploaded it to flickr and tagged it for Gothamist in case Jake wanted to use it as an additional image for this post. (Yes, that's how much I like it.)
It's something I found at nycsubway.org -- the cover of the 1964 subway map with illustrations of the special trains that ran to the World's Fair.
Here's a url for the image but I'm not making it a link this time, so you'll have to cut and paste -- http://www.andrewjlederer.com/1964arrow.jpg
Enjoy
Wow! I didn't realize links were automatically created now. (Cool!)