Happy Park(ing) Day 2010!
The Gothamist
By John Del Signore
September 17, 2010
http://gothamist.com/2010/09/17/happy_parking_day_2010.php
Today is Park(ing) Day (Observed). Most banks and post offices are open, but hundreds of New Yorkers across the city are taking the holiday off of work and turning parking spaces into whimsical mini “parks.” In a sort of friendly competition for the most creative use of a curbside parking space, designers install everything from geodesic domes to botanical gardens to ball pits, liberating over fifty parking spaces in all five boroughs from the TYRANNY of automobiles. And outside the Mayor’s residence, activist group Time’s Up! is having some fun.
Time’s Up! has been the main voice of opposition against the Bloomberg administration’s abandonment of the Spitzer Community Garden Agreement, which required the city to do a State Environmental Quality Review of the gardens before bulldozing and preserve. Earlier this week, the Parks Department announced new rules which the city says offer the gardens more protection against eminent domain arguments. But Time’s Up! is protesting changes that could cost community’s their gardens “for a myriad of reasons—noise complaints, incidents that occur adjacent to gardens, and or failure to maintain ‘good standing.’ ”
Anyway, the Park(ing) Day website has all the info about where you can find a pop-up park near you. In Park Slope they’re setting up a container garden for wildlife and butterflies; the spot outside P.S. 122 in the East Village is “Alternative Side Parking” where they’re promising to “embody 30 years of Queer Performance.” The holiday culminates with a big Park(ing) Day BYO BBQ after-party under the BQE at 6:30. Send us your photos and tag your Flickr photos Gothamist; we’ll do another Park(ing) Day photo feature later!
