“I can crochet with my eyes closed,” London Kaye said as she finished covering a subway pole in a colorful web of yarn. It was Valentine’s Day and with a bag of mini yarn hearts she made during her lunch break in tow, she set out to cover the inside of the train car in crochet. “The goal is to make people smile… I don’t even like Valentine’s, but I want to wish everyone a happy one,” she laughed, measuring out the strands of yarn.
“I feel like if I did this in a small town, I’d get stopped by the cops. But here, there is so much action. Who’s going to stop a little girl crocheting?” As we rode the same L train car from 8th Avenue to the last stop at Canarsie, back to 8th and back to Canarsie, everyone seemed to love what she was doing — kids, tough guys, even the pole break dancers.
The 24-year-old artist usually works outdoors, affixing her pieces to wire fences. Previously, she crocheted a love-letter to Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman, a tribute to Invader’s 8-bit pieces in New York and an LGBT pride update of the Olympic rings. Her pieces get snagged off the fences pretty quickly. She didn’t expect this unsanctioned L train installation to last either.
“It’s definitely worth it,” she said. “It will definitely be gone tomorrow. But it’s seasonal, so fuck it.”
(Video/Photo: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)
