Our 15 Seconds of Fame

We at Overton Park Conservancy are big fans of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” for obvious reasons.  (In fact, your intrepid communications director may have once carved a Ron Swanson pumpkin for Halloween.)  So we could hardly believe it when Patrick posted a screenshot from the March 6 episode on Twitter, pointing out that a map in the background of a scene looked awfully familiar.

Sure enough, we pulled out a copy of Ritchie Smith Associates’ 1988 Master Plan drawing of the park, and it’s an exact match.  The Post-Its in the scene are hard to make out, but it looks like they say things like “BATHROOM” and other features one might locate in a park.  So we’re just going to tell ourselves that Overton Park is serving as the stand-in for Pawnee Commons, a.k.a. Lot 48, a.k.a. The Pit, the piece of land that Leslie has been fighting to turn into a park for the entire run of the show.  Why?  Because we’re super-fans, and this is officially our favorite Easter egg of all time.

So how did Overton Park end up in Pawnee?  Your guess is as good as ours.  If any of you feel like getting your Shauna Malwae-Tweep on and digging into it, please let us know what you discover!

You can check out a larger version of the map on Citizens to Preserve Overton Park’s website.