On a quiet block in a bustling family community, a mystery is a foot.
Painted white, chained to a post with plastic roses adorning its seat: It’s the near mirror image of a “ghost bike”, but this is something almost more unnerving -- a “ghost baby carriage."
David Allen has passed the make-shift monument on 6th Avenue and Union Street, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, many times.
"It usually it means there’s been a car accident of some sort," he points out.
That's true when it comes to “ghost bikes -- the memorials mean a bicyclist died at that spot.
Thus, people around Park Slope, a very baby-conscious neighborhood, assumed someone lost their child sometime before the carriage went up about three weeks ago.
But NBCNewYork reached out to various city agencies to find out if there was a child who died at or near the corner recently. None, including the police, could find such an accident.
What NBCNewYork does know, is that out of all the neighborhoods in this city, Park Slope is a hot bed for carriage controversy.
Local McKenzie Kosut, agrees. Kosut thinks the carriage is just someone who doesn’t like strollers' idea of art or a joke.
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But new dad Christian Hansen, was disturbed. While he inspected the haunting stroller, he said he hoped a baby didn’t die here and “if someone is trying to prove a point [he wishes] they would say what their point is.”
Park Slope’s problem with carriages goes back at least a few years when Union Hall, a local watering hole and restaurant decided to ban strollers. Since then, a few other places, including The Gate did the same.
There’s been so much in fighting in this community over the four-wheeled-baby-holders that Natasha Ryan said, “if it was a sick statement, it makes sense to do it here.”
Sara Bernstein and Jimmy Rudnick live down the street from the carriage. They say they’ve seen artwork go up on that spot before, but even if it is just someone’s statement, Rudnick says the fact that no one is owning up to it, makes it “so manipulative” and a clear affront against people just trying to raise a family.
