Assigment One: due Sept. 7, 2011

Brooklyn, NY – On the evening of August 31, 2011, the skies over Greenpoint were lit up with lights from an unidentified flying object (UFO), witnessed by several residents of the neighborhood, who only later discovered the object to be a blimp, advertising DirecTV.

Several residents were seen walking down Meserole Avenue in the direction of the lights, pointing and causing some commotion on the usually quiet street. Miles away, the distance contributed to the confusion about what the object truly was. Concern was raised when the blimp, which had been hovering in one place for about ten minutes, began to move in a wide circle. It disappeared behind taller buildings before reappearing in full view over Meserole Avenue. The lights of the blimp, which had remained a solid white, began to strobe several colors – green, red, and blue – reminiscent of UFOs seen in science fiction and fantasy movies for years. Confusion was raised when commercial planes were seen taking off near the blimp, rising miles higher.

“It shouldn’t have been flying so low,” Dylan Demanski of 189 Meserole Avenue said of the blimp. “That’s what really confused me – other planes were flying by, going higher, and this thing just kept hovering, lower than anything else in the sky.”

Demanski said he questioned his neighbor about the blimp when he arrived home and found Demanski pointing at the sky. Demanski’s neighbor said that there had been some reports of strange activity in the skies over Greenpoint the previous weekend, during Hurricane Irene.

Only later was it discovered that the unidentified object was a blimp, through the most unusual means – Facebook. A photo was posted of Demanski looking towards the sky, taken by his roommate. The caption of the photo said, “UFO sighting in BK?” Within the hour, an unknown friend had commented on the photo saying, “IT WAS A BLIMP ADVERTISING DIRECT TV!” Through social media, the mystery of the flying object was solved – but not everyone was so pleased with the fact that the UFO was merely a commercial blimp.

“It’s been like my lifelong dream to see a UFO. It really has,” Demanski said in the aftermath of the sighting, admitting to being quite disappointed when he was told the unidentified flying object was only a blimp.

“It looked, at least from where we were standing, like it was a discus. It had strobing lights, so I didn’t really know what to think,” another Meserole Avenue resident, Mercedes Beach, said of the blimp.

Both spent at least an hour outside on Meserole Avenue, staring in awe at the sky and speculating on what it could possibly be. While their fantasies may have been dashed by the discovery that the mysterious lights were only those of a blimp, Demanski and Beach handled the news with a grain of salt.

“I knew it wasn’t really a UFO,” Beach admitted with a shrug. “That stuff is for Hollywood blockbusters, not for far out Brooklyn.”