Their origin is a mystery, but their message rings clear: love is in the air over Park Slope.
For the past several years a pair of red hearts has dangled from a wire above Seventh Street at Fifth Avenue. In honor of Valentine's Day, we talked to the woman who revived the heartfelt display after it was destroyed by a 2013 storm.
Kathy Price first noticed the hearts when she moved to the neighborhood in 2012.
"They put a smile on my face," she said, in part because they seemed to be a play on the more common urban sight of sneakers on a wire.
When the hearts were knocked down by a storm, Price was heartbroken, she wrote on her blog. It finally dawned on her a few months later that she could replace them herself.
Price — who recently baked a cake for city workers to celebrate the installation of a speed hump on her block — cranked up her sewing machine and fashioned two replacement hearts out of cloth stuffed with batting.
She was nervous about reinstalling the small-scale public art piece — could she be arrested, she wondered? She and her husband crept out of their apartment about 9 p.m. one night just before Valentine's Day 2015. She felt a bit like Banksy, but a half dozen people standing a nearby bus stop ignored them, Price said.
The wire was much higher than she remembered, and she and her husband had a hard time tossing the hearts high enough. She realized they were too light, so she reopened them and stuck some travel size shampoo bottles inside to weigh them down. After a few more tries, Price and her husband succeeded, and the hearts have hung over the street since then.
She said the hearts are a sort of love note to her block.
"I really like my street. I never felt like that until I lived here," said Price, who grew up in Atlanta. "I find [the hearts] sort of inspiring. It's not building the High Line, but you can participate in creating your environment even in a city like New York."
