The Dust Bowl era appears to be over.
Councilman Vince Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) and the Parks Department are poised to announce that the recently renovated field inside Leif Ericson Park at Eighth Avenue and 66th Street will either be called Quaker Parrot Park or The Parrot Bowl, a nod to the colorful birds who have taken up residence there.
The park portion — officially known as “the Dust Bowl,” despite some complaints about insensitivity to victims of America’s worst agricultural disaster — was named after the well-worn conditions that once defined it, but since its recent renovation, officials decided a renaming was in order, sparking a contest launched this summer that attracted about 800 votes.
Officials wouldn’t say which name won, but only a birdbrain would have trouble figuring out that the “Dust Bowl” era is destined to come to a close.
After all, parrot aficionado Stephen Baldwin was invited to attend and speak at the Oct. 24 announcement at the field.
Baldwin concurred.
“It would lead me to believe that public opinion has spoken” in favor of one of the parrot names, said Baldwin, an ad man and keeper of the website, brooklynparrots.org.
He doesn’t know what the new name would be, but favors the Parrot Bowl.
“It makes it sound like a pageant, like the Rose Bowl,” he said. “The Parrot Bowl is sort of mysterious and exotic.”
A spokeswoman for Gentile refused to comment on the blockbuster announcement.
Along with the two parrot-phillic names, the third contender was the original.
Critics have wondered why the city was even considering renaming the place with the same name used to describe a devastating chapter in American history, replete with suffering, heartache and despair. Besides, the field is now covered with a luxurious carpet of synthetic turf — hardly reflective of its moniker.
But not everyone is pleased that a new name is taking flight.
“No matter what they call it, I’m going to call it ‘the Dust Bowl,’ ” said longtime Ridgite Frank O’Brien, who kept score for the for the Brooklyn South Softball League, which used to play in the field. “It will always be the Dust Bowl to me.”
The name may not suit it now — but it might one day.
“If they don’t care for the park, it will return to being a dust bowl,” he reasoned.
Dust Bowl announcement (66th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues), Oct. 24 at 3 pm.