More than ten years after the death of founding member Adam Yauch (1964-2012) and after years of negotiations with the city government, a street intersection in New York has now been named after the Beastie Boys. At the intersection of Ludlow Street and Rivington Street in Manhattan’s trendy Lower East Side neighborhood, a green street sign reads: “Beastie Boys Square.”
The cover for “Paul’s Boutique” was also recorded there, the second album by the hip-hop band, which enjoyed worldwide success, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
“We walk down these streets and don’t really think about who they’re named after,” said Adam Horovitz, who attended the ceremonial inauguration of “Beastie Boys Square” with the other remaining band member Michael Diamond, according to US media reports . “But it makes me very happy to know that 50 years from now some kid on the way to school will walk past here, look up and ask themselves, ‘What the hell is a Beastie Boy and why the hell do they have a place?'”
There is already a place in the metropolis that commemorates the band: a playground in Brooklyn is named after band member Yauch, who died in 2012.