Can you make me a Peter Luger’s steak out of LEGOs?
You know when you were little and you loved LEGOs, and you were like, “one day, when I grow up and can buy all the LEGOs I want, I am going to make an extremely accurate LEGO replica of large parts of Brooklyn?”
That probably didn’t happen to you. But it presumably happened to Brooklynite Jonathan Lopes. His 400-square-foot mini LEGO replica of Brooklyn, crafted from his collection of half a million pieces, is accurate down to minute details and features landmarks like the Fairway in Red Hook, Fire Engine House 226, and the A train.
Lopes, who works in the publishing industry (big surprise) commented that what was most challenging was trying to achieve “certain aesthetics with the limitations of the brick. I try to get it as real looking as possible.” (Artisanal!) If you want to check his work, his 12,000-brick historic Williamsburg Bank is currently on display at Boerum Hill Dry Cleaners, 391 Pacific St. The rest of LEGO Brooklyn is in his living room, which, if you’re at all familiar with New York real estate, you’ll realize means there’s nothing else in his living room at all.
Now that he’s finished with his Park Slope playset, maybe Lopes will move onto building LEGO statues of famous fellow Brooklynites. He could start with Larry David — but if it’s hard to make brick textures out of LEGOs, imagine using them to create realistic-looking cashmere sweaters, running shoes, and bald heads.
