A small-business owner has gone viral for his riveting videos about Long Island’s most obscure oddities.
“People don’t realize everything that goes on around here,” said Arthur Frischman, a sign-store owner-turned-media sensation, to The Post.
“Now a big part of my job is driving all over Long Island, and I’ve seen more of it in the past two years than in the last 60,” said the 60-year-old Northport resident and former marketer, known on Instagram as Long Island Sign Guy.
Frischman’s quick clips include stories such as the reason behind a bizarre street name stemming from a town founder’s lunch one day.
Frischman also has delved into how a local iconic site was modeled around one of Europe’s most beautiful structures and how there was once a marvelous idea to make a bridge connecting Long Island and Westchester County.
“These are huge stories that people just drive by and never ever know about,” he said.
Frischman’s first social-media videos rated local signage — as a way to promote his business — starting about two years ago.
Then he started throwing oddball Long Island facts into the mix, usually standing next to the landmark and doing an impromptu monologue on his phone, and soon realized he was onto something big.
“A lot of what I do now is suggested by people who watch and say, ‘Hey, you should check this out,’ ” Frischman said.
He has amassed 2,000 followers and been promoted on the popular page Long Island Wiseguy.
Last week, he filmed at Jerichio’s Millerigde Inn, one of the nation’s oldest restaurants that is home to several exotic peacocks which walk around its parking lot.
“The fact that so many people like hearing about all the fun facts of where they live just feels great to me,” he said.
Here are some of the hard-to-believe facts he’s stumbled upon.
The bridge to Westchester
Drivers on the Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway may wonder why the relatively short roadway abruptly ends on Jericho Turnpike and Merrick Road.
“It was supposed to go from Ocean Parkway all the way to Rye, New York, over the Long Island Sound,” said Frischman, who is reading Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” to make more videos about Robert Moses’ influence on Long Island.
The expressway was built in phases and had been slated to extend past Oystery Bay, which it ironically doesn’t touch, and then into Westchester.
Aggressive protests in the 1960s and 1970s halted the life changing concept.
A touch of Venice
The active Jones Beach water tower, better known to sunbathers as “the pencil” sitting in the circle between Ocean and Wantagh parkways, is actually an homage to one of Italy’s architectural treasures.
“The Jones Beach water tower is built off of the bell tower of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice,” Frischman explained, adding that this feature once again is thanks to Moses’ input.
“He was a big stickler for details, and he had pictured this water tower that he had seen, and literally hand-drew it to be made,” Frischman said.
A scrumptious street
Another local head-scratcher is why on Earth there is a Bread and Cheese Hollow Road in Smithtown — and the answer is more than a mouthful, according to Frischman.
“When Richard Smith founded Smithtown centuries ago, the story was that he was given a day to ride his bull around. And wherever he went, that’s what property would be given to him,” the signmaker said.
“He stopped for a sandwich, and the common sandwich of the time was bread and cheese. That’s what he had, [and] it became Bread and Cheese Hollow Road.”
Every overpass on LI is different
Pay attention to this one the next time you’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Each parkway overpass on Long Island is intentionally built different than one another.
It was done as a way for Moses to make travel “a scenic and enjoyable experience,” said Frischman, who noted the structures all have separate styles of brick-lay as well.
“The overpasses all have different facades, all different looks to them, so every one is unique.”
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