The world just finished a (possibly draining to the point of exhaustion) season of Game of Thrones, where plenty of dying and not a lot of winning happened. One of the people of Westeros who shuffled off the mortal coil was Westeros’ favorite bastard, Jon Snow. This was, as it turns out, a very unpopular direction for the plot to go in, and the collective body of the internet has spent the hours since either wailing about it or covering its eyes and yelling “NO SPOILERS.” Williamsburg resident Matt Doherty was so upset he made the street memorial you see above, complete with novena candles and snow, and left it out on Bedford Avenue and North 7th Street in Williamsburg.
Like the Breaking Bad yarn farewell, but much more specific, Doherty’s tribute shows the lengths people are willing to go for television shows. Judging by the #jonsnow hashtag, the street memorial in the style of your usual street memorial for dead people who once lived in our actual physical world, went up at about 9pm last night and started circulating and drawing curious onlookers more heavily by 10pm.
Doherty told us that he thought of the memorial while coming up the steps of the Bedford stop. Does he think Jon Snow is dead? Doherty says he can’t say for sure, which is why he’s calling his tribute one to “a memorial for a guy who died but hadn’t been buried yet,” he told us. He bought the novena candles and dog bone (for Ghost, Jon Snow’s direwolf) at a nearby bodega, printed out a picture of Jon Snow at Duane Reade and stopped at home to get a frame and to make the signs the surround the picture, which yes, are hand drawn.
Doherty said that while he was setting the memorial up, people stopped to see what he was doing once he started lighting the candles. He told us there was a mix of people who understood what was happening, someone who called “Spoilers!” from the crowd, but there was someone who spoke with him who wasn’t familiar with the books or TV show.
“They were asking me what happened and I said ‘Oh a guy got stabbed,’ and when they asked where I told them ‘He lives north of here, it’s really cold up there.'”
RIP, Jon Snow. The most Brooklyniest shrine in all of Brooklyn, c/o @dortreport #got #gameofthrones #westeros #youknoweverything #jonsnow #rip #brooklyn #williamsburg #nyc #newyorkcity A photo posted by Sarah Woodard (@sarahwoodardnyc) on
Doherty said he put the tribute together Monday, because he knew that this was when people were talking about the death and the season finale. Ultimately, Doherty told us that he had no intent to ruin the show for anyone, he just “wanted to have fun with something that makes us happy and keeps us going.”
This isn’t the first time Doherty has found himself rocketed to light internet fame, as he was also the Brawny man of 2014, an illustrious prize that got him a year’s supply of paper towels. This also isn’t the first high-profile television event for Doherty. The creative at NBC and adjunct professor at the Brooklyn branch of the Miami Ad School has also recently been on The Price Is Right, seen here winning the One Bid round and meeting Drew Carey himself:
Doherty told us that while he didn’t win the Showcase Showndown after making it that far, he did manage to win a year’s supply of cake. Fortunately, Doherty wasn’t stabbed upon making it on stage, because unlike other games, on The Price is Right you win or you just sort of meander offstage having had a fun experience.
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