Had she lived past that fateful night 50 years ago, Marilyn Monroe might very well have been your neighbor. It’s possible to think of Ms. Monroe as an 86-year-old puttering around Park Slope sharing stories about kissing Kennedys over coffee at the local cafe and putting on a white dress every once in awhile for old times sake. At least that’s how I’d imagine her should we share a stoop, and it might not be so far fetched to believe the blonde bombshell would have wound up living in Brooklyn. As Gothamist reports, Monroe dreamed of retiring to the borough before she died, calling it her “favorite place in the world, so far.”
Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s untimely death. In celebration of her too-short life, Gothamist re-posted quotes from Monroe in which she alludes to wanting to settle down in Brooklyn. Her wish to “look back at Manhattan” makes me think she might have wound up in Williamsburg, making her the harbinger of hipsterdom decades before today’s influx of tattooed twentysomethings took root. I could also picture her in DUMBO or Sunset Park, especially the latter, enjoying the decrepit grandeur of its old limestone building, the views over New York Harbor and lower Manhattan, and, of course, the tacos.
