Cycling activists locked a white-painted bicycle to a street sign at the corner of Eighth Avenue and President Street in Park Slope on Dec. 2, turning the site of a fatal crash into a makeshift memorial.
Biking advocates from the New York City Street Memorial Project installed a plaque and a “ghost bike” — adorned with plastic flowers — on the corner where 50-year-old cyclist Jonathan Millstein lost his life after colliding with an empty school bus on Sept. 10.
The haunting monument is part of the group’s planned Jan. 4 Memorial Ride and Walk, which will visit the sites of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities around the city, including the corner of Boerum Place and Livingston Street, where 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse was run down in September.
The “ghost bike” isn’t the first improvised memorial for Millstein. In October, an artist stenciled an outline of a splayed body on the asphalt at the corner where Millstein died, listing his name, the date of his death, and the declaration: “Killed by bus.”
