What’s Wrong With This Picture? (Hint: It’s December)

If your answer was “light” you were only partially right. If you said, “There are no holiday decorations hanging above”, you get first prize.

The picture was taken during the height of the Christmas and Hannukah season (yesterday), but you would never know it based on the lack of festive decor.

This year, the Bay Improvement Group was unable to drum up enough support for the festive hangings. There were not enough business owners in Sheepshead Bay who wanted to participate, so the decorations could not be hung. It’s not known if the reasons for opting out involved prohibitive costs, cultural differences, or just general bah-humbugness.

One city bus driver, who has routes in North Brooklyn and Southern Brooklyn, told us that he drives through many shopping districts, and he noticed that nearly all of them have festive decorations hanging above the main thoroughfare. Kings Highway has hanging decorations with a lit menorah. Church Avenue has snowflake decor (see below). Even Brighton Beach, with the subway lumbering overhead, managed to look festive with seasonal decor. He was curious to know why Sheepshead Bay and Avenue U business owners decided to opt out.

So, why did Sheepshead Bay Road and Ave U business owners choose to keep the streets so dark this holiday season? (And don’t say it’s dark, because I’m a bad photographer.)