BUSHWICK — A map painted on the side of Bushwick's new subway-themed apartment building was ripped off from the work of an amateur cartographer, he said.
Jake Berman, 30, an attorney with what he calls the "weird hobby" of making subway maps, designed the one he says is now painted on the side of 132A Stanhope St.
He said he came up with the design seven years ago while in a "boring" classes in law school — and he never gave permission for the building's owners to use it.
The map took him almost a year to perfect, he said, and currently lives online on Wikipedia Creative Commons, which means it can be used for free if he gets credit, according to the licensing information.
Now he wants his credit on the side of the building.
"I'm hoping they just made a mistake and this can all be sorted out with just a bucket of paint," said Berman, who's consulting an attorney but said he doesn't intend to sue.
His lawyer is trying to contact the building's owner, listed on property records as 132 Stanhope LLC, he said.
"People see things on Wikipedia and figure, 'Oh, we can just take it,'" Berman said.
"But somebody made it and you have to give them credit for it."
The building's realtor, All Year Management, said the mural's designer, Yossi Gottehrer, admitted to using Berman's map as the source of the piece, spokesman Jonathan Greenspun said.
Gottehrer couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
"After speaking with the designer we now realize a portion of Mr. Berman’s artwork was used. The developers will reach out to Mr. Berman to make sure he is properly credited with the design."
Friends started emailing Berman congratulating him after the new building featured in news stories, he said.
He immediately recognized he map he had designed.
"That's funny that looks like...wait a minute," he said.
There are several different distinguishing factors that make his map unique from any other, he said.
For one, he uses a dot system that marks whether the train always stops at any given location (a white circle), only stops there during rush hours (an outline of a circle), or only stops on weekdays (a half white half black circle).
Each different subway line has its own line on the map so you can see at each stop for each train, as opposed to the MTA map that mostly consolidates trains that run along the same routes.
He came up with the circle system when he missed a date while waiting for a weekend B train that never came.
Secondly, in his subway map, the train lines follow different curves than the MTA's official one. Berman believes his is more accurate.
"The way the lines actually curve doesn't match any other map that exists," he said. "Every map maker does this slightly differently."
Lastly, he points out the font and layout of the words.
Berman cycled over to the Bushwick building from his Clinton Hill home earlier this week to see the map. The whole week has been "surreal," he said.
"If that's what you need to sell real estate in Bushwick, that's what you have to do to sell real estate in Bushwick," he said.
"Nobody told me about this, nobody gave me any credit for it. It's bad manners."
The new rental building will be listed at Subway Realty, though it hasn't yet gone online.
Here's Berman's map in full.
(Courtesy of Jake Berman via Wikipedia Commons)
