Myrtle-Broadway JMZ Subway Stop

About

Myrtle-Broadway JMZ Subway Stop refers to an infamous subway station located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City. The station has regularly appeared in memes from New Yorkers that cast it as a surreal place, and memes about the location often feature a photograph of the Dunkin Donuts, Popeyes and Checkers fast-food restaurant locations that sit beneath the train stop.

Origin

The Myrtle-Broadway subway stop opened in 1889^[1] and currently serves the J, M and Z trains. In the 2010s, young people began moving to Bushwick, Brooklyn, gentrifying the area.^[2] This led to an uptick in commentary online about the subway stop, as many Millennial and Gen Z New Yorkers active on social media lived near the subway stop.

Though the station had been discussed in commentary and joked about in local communities online in the latter half of the 2010s, it began seeing use in more widespread meme and meme formats starting in the 2020s.

One early example was posted by Twitter / X user @stopolive^[3] on December 14th, 2020, who tweeted, "if u ever ate at the checkers on myrtle broadway, the vaccine ain’t gon work on u," gaining over 150 retweets and 630 likes in four years (shown below).

The stop's reputation as a surreal and strange place is likely due to the prevalence of a drug known as K2^[10] in the area. A local bodega called Big Boy Deli^[11] was shut down in 2020 due to illegally selling the drug, which can be dangerously potent and cause people to act in a zombie-like stupor.

Spread

Over the following years, memes about the location were regularly posted and often featured a picture of the Dunkin Donuts, Popeyes and Checkers locations that sit next to each other beneath the station. On March 27th, 2021, Twitter user @flowrmeadow^[12] posted an image of the three fast food establishments under the stop and wrote "Them," gaining over 960 retweets and 9,900 likes in three years (shown below, right)

On March 7th, 2023, Twitter^[4] user @kornbIuth featured the location in a You Have To Be Gay And Religiously Traumatized meme, gaining over 5,600 likes in two days (shown below, left). On August 8th, Instagram user @joan.of.arca^[5] posted what would become the most prevalent image of the subway stop in memes, gaining over 8,000 likes in one year (shown below, right).

The picture periodically went viral over the following year. For example, on January 21st, 2024, Twitter user @Meatfighterr^[6] quote-tweeted a user who posted the picture commenting that it looked like a fighting game stage, gaining over 14,000 retweets and 142,000 likes in five months (shown below, left). The tweet was widely reposted outside of Twitter, including subreddits like /r/deadlockpw^[8] and /r/blackpeopletwitter.^[9]

On June 14th, 2024, Twitter user @Nigreaux^[7] responded to a prompt about "thin" places where "the veil between this world and the next is thin" with the image, gaining over 1,400 retweets and 10,000 likes in a matter of hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References