NEW YORK — The streets of the New York suburb of Dyker Heights, south of Brooklyn, seem deserted until five in the afternoon, when the exuberant Christmas decorations of many of its homes are lit up, which have transformed this area into one of the Christmas attractions most visited in the city of skyscrapers.
A few minutes before the traffic lights turn on, the traffic police are at various intersections, such as those of 12th Street with 83rd and 84th Streets, to try to bring some order to the avalanche of pedestrian and motorized visitors who they walk through the place until midnight, when the lights go out.
Large groups of tourists stop in front of the more baroque residences, such as the house of Lucia Spata who, in the 80s of the last century, decided to reload the Christmas decorations of her house, gradually infecting closer and closer until in turn the neighborhood in the tourist destination that it is today and which rivals in this period with the Christmas tree of Rockefeller Center, the Brooklyn Bridge or the facades and windows of the shopping centers of Manhattan.
THE DELIGHTS OF TOURISTS
“We have been to the financial district, the High Line, Central Park, Fifth Avenue and the Brooklyn Bridge and, today, taking advantage of the decoration of Dyker Heights, which we had read was worth a visit, we took the opportunity to come “, sure Joaquín Sanchís in front of the house of Spata.
Sanchís, a Spanish tourist traveling with his family, assures that he has seen “some photos” before visiting the neighborhood, but these, he adds, do not do justice to reality.
“You can’t imagine that, with so much decoration, lights, dolls… It’s impressive, it’s very beautiful,” she said.
Santa Clauses, angels, cribs, reindeer, lead soldiers, elves, penguins, polar bears, snowmen and all sorts of luminous figures of all possible sizes decorate and sometimes huddle together like in an old attic where, instead of being covered in dust, are flooded with lights, an oceanic amount of lights of all colors that also cover the facades and spread over the trunks and branches of the surrounding trees.
ALL LIGHT AND BRIGHTNESS
“The theme (of my house) is luminosity,” explains Frank Mangano to EFE in front of the facade of his two-story house decorated with thousands of lights and which is crowned by five white angels with golden wings who play the trumpet on the word ” consider”.
Mangano, who dedicates the decoration to his recently deceased father this year, explains that he wants to convey the message that “better days are coming, brighter days. So the whole theme of the house is to shine, very bright, shine. ” .
She moved to the neighborhood in 2011 and, since then, not a year has gone by without her decorating the facade, which lights up at five in the afternoon with the energy of a dawn.
“I get asked a lot (about the price of the electric bill) and it’s not as much as people think, mainly because we use a special type of lighting and LED lighting. So, more or less, the electric bill doubles during a month,” he says without offering a specific figure.
The influx of public has not only forced the tightening of traffic officers, but has also attracted street vendors of Christmas products and food stalls such as Antonio’s, which opens its trailer-restaurant from seven to offer sweets, hamburgers, tacos or burritos .
There are also clothing brands, which do not hesitate to rent the gardens of a local residence to organize one-night promotional events. And even several houses take advantage of the decoration to raise money for a charitable cause.
NOT ALL IS JOY IN THE CHRISTMAS KINGDOM
While Mangano says the residents of his street not only don’t complain, but that most of them indulge in this Christmas tradition like him, some locals, like Laureen, don’t see well the flow of visitors and trash with good eyes and the traffic it ensures accompanies them.
“I’ve been seeing this very busy season for 25 years and it seems to attract a lot of nice people. Every year they add something, this year the rubbish bins, which was a big problem at first because of the rubbish being thrown in. But everyone seems very happy,” says Laureen, not without a little sarcasm, as she walks her dog before the sun goes down and the calm breaks.
