Ikea Preservation Sign Vanishes, Neighborhood Theories Abound

So, we had noticed that the ironic sign Ikea had put up outside their vast construction site in Red Hook has vanished. The sign, you might recall, promotes the archeological research they are doing on a previously filled Graving Dock at the old Todd Shipyard site. Which would be unremarkable, except that at the very moment archeologists are making sure to document the old Graving Dock, Ikea has been filling the existing one on the property. One can start with a word like "ironic" and then move on to others.

Why has the sign gone missing? Where did it go? Neighborhood correspondent Chris Curen, who previously provided us with photographic evidence that Ikea's construction crews have been busy little beavers and have filled about 3/4 of the Graving Dock, writes that there are several local theories:

1) IKEA noticed people taking pictures of the sign, and decided that ANYTHING (read: public art on the wall, or starting to fill in the graving dock during daylight hours) that garnered the attention of a camera was bad.

2) Somebody actually familiar with the acute misinformation-through-ommission that the marker represented tore the thing down.

3) The sign was actually an extremely clever form of satirizing IKEA's bold-faced BS campaign - which is, actually, how I initially read it. Until I recalled how utterly ham-fisted IKEA is.

We're thinking that Theory No. 1 is a good candidate as we've personally been approached by security while standing on the other side of Beard Street. Once, when we walked by the site's main gate with our camera and stopped to take a photo of the Revere Sugar Dome another on-site security officer started shouting at us from inside the Porta-Potty in which she is stationed asking us what we were doing.

This hyper-sensitivity to cameras (in completely public places) makes some sense if you consider that Ikea began filling the Graving Dock with weeks of a lawsuit being filed to prevent them from doing so.

Related Posts:
Ikea's Left Hand Digs While Right Hand Fills
Three-Fourths of Graving Dock Filled by Ikea