Beastie Boys fans fought for the right to rename a Brooklyn Heights playground after the group’s late founding member Adam “MCA” Yauch — and won.
City officials and members of the legendary hip-hop band are expected to gather Friday at Palmetto Playground on State Street for a ceremonial renaming in honor of the Brooklyn Heights native, sources said. The site will be called “Adam Yauch Playground.”
Yauch died from throat cancer a year ago this Saturday at the age of 47, only weeks after the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Beastie Boys Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond are expected to join Borough President Marty Markowitz, Councilman Steve Levin and Parks Commissioner Veronica White in honoring Yauch.
Levin, who says he’s a “huge” Beastie Boys fan, would not confirm the renaming but said “Adam Yauch Playground would be a much more fitting name since he actually hung out there, and it would be a great testament to a great leader and musician.”
The movement to rename the park grew out of a post last year on the Brooklyn Heights Blog that gained steam on Facebook. At first, fans pushed to have nearby Squibb Park renamed in Yauch’s honor, but Brooklyn Heights residents said such a name change would dishonor pharmaceutical giant Edward Robinson Squibb. Squibb opened his first lab where Squibb Park now sits at Middagh Street.
Fans then pushed for the renaming of Palmetto Playground and were met with little opposition.
According to the Parks Department’s web site, Palmetto Playground’s nomenclature has little to do with Brooklyn and stretches all the way to South Carolina.
“It was inspired by the names of the surrounding streets: Atlantic Avenue, Columbia Place, and State Street,” the web site says. “Columbia is the capitol of South Carolina, an Atlantic state, and the state tree is the Cabbage Palmetto, hence, Palmetto Playground.”