The Brooklyn Paper: Update! Jacko tribute looks to be headed to Prospect Park
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Update! Jacko tribute looks to be headed to Prospect Park

By Jared Foretek and Mike McLaughlin
for The Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Paper / Ben Muessig
A tribute to Michael Jackson may be getting too big for Fort Greene Park.
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Fort Greene legend Spike Lee was organizing the tribute.

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City officials are poised to tell hordes of Michael Jackson fans to beat it from Fort Greene Park.

The deceased superstar’s much-hyped posthumous birthday celebration — planned by Spike Lee — has grown bigger than the little Olmsted and Vaux jewelbox — and city officials spent most of today scrambling to relocate the memorial, most likely to Prospect Park.

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“That’s where we’re looking,” said Parks Department spokesman Phil Abramson about the Aug. 29 memorial/party/tribute/concert. “There were concerns about the size of the event.”

Abramson’s comment — just in time for The Brooklyn Paper’s thriller of an online deadline — came at the tail end of a day of confusion over the steadily growing event.

Earlier in the day, Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Fort Greene) told a New York Times blog, The Local, that Lee’s memorial kept getting bigger. (Perhaps you could blame it on the boogie, as Jackson himself once sang.)

“This was supposed to be a small-scale community event,” said James. “Now they’re concerned about crowd control.”

Word continues to spread over the Internet like a speed demon (that’s a Jackson song title, silly) of Lee’s homage to the pop icon. Lee directed in the video for the 1996 single, “They Don’t Care About Us.”

It is unclear how many people are expected at the event, as Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks has not answered The Brooklyn Paper’s numerous requests for comment.

But a full-out tribute to the one-time King of Pop could attract tens of thousands, given Jackson’s vast popularity.

Aug. 29 would have been Jacko’s 51st birthday. Jackson died on June 25 under mysterious circumstances.

©2009 Community Newspaper Group

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