Take, for example, the Myrtle-Broadway stop, a run-of-the-mill subway station in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Over the past couple of years, it has become a mildly popular meme—particularly amongst New York City residents. The station itself, which is elevated instead of underground, isn’t the primary subject of these memes as much as the three fast food chain restaurants that stand adjacent to it.
The Dunkin Donuts, Checkers, and Popeyes on Myrtle Avenue have gotten the reputation of being surreal, primarily because of this viral image. They’ve been called “thin places,” where the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. The restaurants are frequently compared to video game locations and movie sets, but neither of those things is what made it a lasting meme. If you ask me, the aura of Myrtle-Broadway has been dramatically overstated. The Myrtle-Broadway meme's actual “it” factor is that it hits on two levels of identification: location and brand.
There’s no question that one explanation for the popularity of the Myrtle-Broadway meme is that a lot of people who make and share Twitter memes live in Bushwick. These memes are not sentimental musings about growing up in Brooklyn by native New Yorkers; they’re mostly posted by transplants who moved there in the past 1-15 years.
The Dunkin-Checkers-Popeyes combo as we know it didn’t even materialize until at least 2013, when the Checkers portion of this triad was announced (reports of when it actually opened vary). If this meme was solely propelled by reproductions of this specific image of Myrtle-Broadway, one could see why someone who has never been there would see it as a place of great ambiance and familiarity. But the surrealism angle is certainly not the only way of meme-ing Myrtle-Broadway, with a lot of the memes about it amounting to, “Hey, this is a place that I recognize! I love recognizing places!”
The first instances of this meme have nothing to do with surreality but instead reference Dunkin Donuts, Checkers, and Popeyes as places that hold other meanings to them. Bushwick residents' knowledge of this location is more crucial to the meme's prominence than its so-called surrealism because surrealism isn’t consistent across all iterations.
Including three chain restaurants in the Myrtle-Broadway meme undoubtedly contributes to its success. Many other memes and general viral phenomena highlight a store with nationally recognizable branding and a unique visual aesthetic. The Goth Target in Chicago is the perfect example.
While the archetypal Target is housed in a sprawling suburban American town with bright red spheres up front so that nobody drives their SUV into the storefront, the Goth Target (as popularized by TikTok in 2021) is aesthetic bliss. It’s so unlike any other Targets, even those in urban areas. The juxtaposition of a company that has only existed in name since 2000 being housed in a beautiful-intricately designed building commissioned in 1899 by Louis Sullivan, an architect whose style was all his own, is palpable. Whether you’ve been to this Target in real life or have only seen it on TikTok, you can easily see what’s so special about it.
Photos of chain restaurants that aren’t architecturally unique have also gone viral. Take the JRPG Taco Bell, for instance.
Like the Myrtle-Broadway meme, this picturesque picture of a Taco Bell in South Dakota has been compared to a video game location (open-world RPGs, in this case). Even without that comparison, there is something visually striking about a Taco Bell surrounded by nothing but hills and grass. Most of the Taco Bells I’ve seen look more like Breezewood, Pennsylvania, than a John Ford movie, but not this one. It’s also unusual to see a chain restaurant in a super rural place with very few signs of life around, as we are so used to them in suburbs and cities.
What I still find baffling about the Myrtle-Broadway meme is that it’s difficult to articulate why a Dunkin Donuts, Checkers, and Popeyes next to each other are visually unique. It might be unique to people who have never lived in an urban place, but there are subway stops and restaurant fronts just like it all across Brooklyn and Queens.
The literal brands of Dunkin Donuts, Checkers, and Popeyes carry the meme where the visuals fall short. We are not immune to the propaganda, and just because somebody is a sophisticated New Yorker doesn’t mean they don’t get excited about seeing brands they recognize and form positive associations with them through jokes. I can say with certainty that this meme wouldn’t have thrived if the three restaurants were local businesses. Brooklyn transplants wouldn’t have recognized them in the same way they do chains they grew up with elsewhere.
While branding is important, recognition-based-relatability gives the Myrtle-Broadway meme legs. New Yorkers love sharing memes that merely mention easily identifiable features of their city. They have been clowned on Twitter for years for claiming that they’re so unique for having bodegas and considerate citizens.
None of that clowning will stop these New York posters, nor should it, nor is posting within a clueless bubble only a New York thing. I have seen memes that claim that potholes are a unique feature of the Midwest when that’s obviously not true. New Yorkers are just the ones who control a ton of the meme-based (see what I did there) cultural conversation. If 8 million people were living in Dubuque, Iowa, I’m sure there would be a meme about how the local Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers has a unique vibe. People would share memes about it merely because they recognized that spot and subconsciously wanted to feel like a part of that meme. And there’s nothing wrong with creating, liking, or sharing something because of that primal rush of recognition. It’s far more honest than proclaiming Myrtle-Broadway is an uncanny vision with a dreamlike quality.
