While other parts of town are touted as featuring the twin virtues “vibrant” and “diverse,” Bay Ridge features flags from the world over along its streets, mounted on head-high flagpoles on main and side streets. This is a tradition that goes back decades, as I remember them appearing as early as the 1960s.
The Moroccan flag, a red field with a green five-pointed star or pentagram in the center, appears in front of a restaurant serving Moroccan fare on 78th Street and 5th Avenue. The red field is a color symbolic of Morocco’s royal family, which claims to have antecedents dating back to the Prophet, while the pentagram is representative of the Seal of King Solomon (the great Biblical king of Israel) which is said to have supernatural properties.
3/28/14
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Bay Ridge has a large Middle Eastern population, and that probably includes Moroccans even though Morocco isn’t geographically part of the Middle East.
The Moroccan American Treaty of Friendship is the longest-surviving treaty the United States ever concluded with a foreign country, signed in 1786.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan%E2%80%93American_Treaty_of_Friendship