Some folks just can’t help but see sex in this city: A recently erected sculpture in Madison Square Park has been turning heads for all the wrong reasons.
Murray Hill resident Joe Schmidt, 59, walks his pooch daily at the dog run in the park and noticed that the oblong art installation of a child’s head actually resembles another body part.
“The side with a face looks like a face,” said Schmidt. “But without that it looks like something else.” Schmidt and a handful of his friends have rebranded the public space “dildo park.”
“We make fun of it. It’s just such a phallic piece,” said Schmidt. “God bless the artist who did it.”
A spokesperson for Madison Square Park insisted that the art piece by Jaume Plensa is explicitly not sexual and maintains it’s just supposed to look like a 9-year-old girl. It was based on the Greek myth of the mountain nymph Echo.
But in the right light, any one of NYC’s iconic buildings can resemble the male member, says psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert. He calls it just another circumstance of city living.
“New York City is one big projection test,” said Alpert. “The otherwise ambiguous stimuli such as skyscrapers and sculptures reveal hidden emotions. This isn’t surprising, given that New Yorkers are so sexually repressed.”
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