(Photo: Scott Lynch)
Delancey Street is finally getting a protected bike lane, the Department of Transportation announced today. With more and more bikers set to use the Williamsburg Bridge during the looming L-train shutdown, the DOT is promising to make the lead-up to the bridge slightly less harrowing, and may also implement Amsterdam-style bike parking nearby.
(Photo: Luisa Rollenhagen)
If the Olympics put you in the mood for serving and spiking, here’s some good news: The Henry M. Jackson Playground is getting a volleyball area. It’s just one of many perks coming to two Lower East Side playgrounds as part of a city initiative to modernize ailing parks.
Bike culture kicked into high gear over the weekend, as three spokes-centric events took over the city streets. On Saturday in Williamsburg, the City Reliquary’s annual Bicycle Fetish Day brought “bike nerds” together in a competition for best vintage, “mutant,” commuter, handmade, and small-wheeled bikes– with a prize also going to worst bike for good measure. Naturally, the Black Label Bike Club and the Puerto Rican Schwinn Club were out in full force, with this double-tallbike swing stealing the show.
Elected officials and neighborhood activists brought the contest over the long-promised Bushwick Inlet Park to the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront this morning when they publicly posted their ultimatum notice for the developer hanging onto the would-be parkland.
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Taste of Bushwick 2015 (Francisco Bravo)
Sure, Smorgasburg used to satiate your eccentric food cravings, but, like everything else in this city, popularity got the best of it and now it’s a crowded, sweaty mess, populated with frat boys, tourists and out-of-town parents scrambling for the last bite of $12 truffled ramen burrito and fighting for a table in the shade. If you’re looking for a chiller place to sample an array of drinks and creative new eats while hanging outside with your besties, maybe one of these summer food fests will do the trick. Just don’t bogart the okinomiyaki on a stick.
(Photo: B+B)
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that, starting in August (er, just in time for the end of summer), Citi Bike will be installing new docking stations for their ubiquitous, sluggish tourist-mobiles in several new zones– all over Manhattan up to 110th Street and several Brooklyn neighborhoods including, among others, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Red Hook– as well as expanding their slots in already covered areas. The announcement comes after what was Citi Bike’s “busiest year ever” in 2015, when around 100,000 annual members took more than 10 million rides.
Out this month, “Meet the Regulars: People of Brooklyn and the Places They Love” is Joshua D. Fischer’s debut book, and the first to come from Bedford + Bowery. Here’s a new installment of the series.
(Photos: Phil Provencio)
After
Some people can work wonders in small quarters. (Remember that beautifully organized, itty-bitty kitchen-shower apartment?) I am not one of those people. I’ve lived in a 350-square-foot Lower East Side apartment with my husband for four years, and during that time I’ve managed to keep it in an almost uninterrupted state of mess (except when guests come to stay).
The new book from Reverend Billy (Image courtesy of Rev. Billy)
“Have you been to one of our shows lately?” Reverend Billy asked me. The answer was– no, I have not. Not ever. In my chat with the eco-activist, author, and radical preacher who “prays to life on earth,” I was curious to know what in heaven’s name a Reverend was doing on the calendar at a Bushwick DIY venue like Market Hotel. But Billy’s explanation brought everything together for me. “They’re a little like mosh pits,” he explained. “It’s a punk gospel for life. It’s a laboratory for getting going again.”
A teaser like that is hard to turn your back on, and so is the Reverend’s larger environmental message: consumerism and “nation-state allegiances” stand in the way of our relationship with the Earth. As the effects of climate change become increasingly apparent, there’s a new kind of urgency to changing our ways, and Reverend Billy believes that calls for physical, direct action are the only way to foment radical change. But when he’s not putting his body on the line to preach against the further slaughter of the earth, the Reverend is hosting shows like the one happening this weekend at the Market Hotel. “I’m trying to preach here,” he said, exasperated. “And along with the choir, we’re trying to inspire activism in our audience.”
The skies of Bushwick have been emptier since a massive fire, a week ago, killed 500 trained pigeons trapped on the roof of a DeKalb Avenue building. But racing pigeons still fly over the neighborhood. On a recent afternoon, a flock of the beautiful, multi-colored birds passed over one of the buildings that lines the eastern side of Maria Hernandez Park. Some were bright white with brown wings, others black with grey specks; some had small short beaks, or feather “crowns” on top of their heads. These were no rats with wings.