On March 14, 2021, I photographed a “banana bench” outside a townhouse stoop in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Not long after, on April 2, 2021, I documented that banana bench in Brooklyn Banana Bench Photo, wherein I erroneously attributed the bench to Gowanus, Brooklyn (It is actually in Boerum Hill). I did not think back to the article much until it unexpectedly gained a flood of viewers in the first week of July 2023, thanks, insofar as I could tell, to being shared by someone on Facebook. That was enough to make it our eighth most-visited article of July 2023. It would never again make an impression on our article popularity charts, but I did pass by the banana bench in real life from time-to-time in the intervening five years.
When I photographed the Boerum banana bench back in 2021, it was clearly and beyond doubt banana-colored, with a yellow body and green step and tip, as you can see both in my article and in a higher quality version of my photograph on Pixelfed. Over time, I began to notice that the banana bench, which is very much out in the elements, was looking worse for wear. There were chips. The color was fading. But never once do I recall having thought that it was losing the essence of banana-ness, and for that reason I never felt compelled to document it for a follow-up article. Or should I say never until Sunday, April 26, 2026.
I present to you a sad sight:
Save for the tip of the stem, the banana bench is now chalk-white. Like the statues of Greco-Roman antiquity, it lost its color. I have previously written about albino sparrows and 2D Japanese girls, but never before an albino banana (albinana?).
Had I not previously photographed the banana bench and published an article about it to my website on the world wide web, I may have walked past the apparition edition of the banana bench without realizing that it was supposed to be a banana. Unfortunately for my friend, I recognized it for what it was and briefly halted our walk to take a photograph, just like I had several months earlier when she and I happened first upon BLOB DYLAN in Williamsburg and second upon a lost stuffed bird.
In order to round out this post and share a link from around the world wide web, I went on a search engine hunt for something about white bananas. Mojeek Search turned up a March 15, 2011 blog post by NaptimeWriting promisingly titled White Banana. The post began as follows:
My mom tells a story about a child who, when asked what color a banana is, replied, ‘White.’
In the case of the Boerum Hill Banana Bench in April 2026, the banana is white outside and inside. If the person responsible for the banana bench happens to read this, do note that re-painting the banana bench may lead to a third banana bench article.
