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These Hearts on a Wire Are a Love Note to a Park Slope Block

By Leslie Albrecht | February 10, 2016 3:28pm
 A pair of hearts has dangled over Seventh Street near Fifth Avenue for the past several years. The original hearts, made of paper, were blown down in a storm. Resident Kathy Price replaced them with cloth versions in 2015.
A pair of hearts has dangled over Seventh Street near Fifth Avenue for the past several years. The original hearts, made of paper, were blown down in a storm. Resident Kathy Price replaced them with cloth versions in 2015.
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Lea Bonnier

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."