Cleaning up Hardy Park in the Bronx, photo by Daily News/Daniel Beekman

By now, everyone’s been getting cabin fever from hunkering down at home this past week. If your family’s been itching to go out and get active, consider volunteering with the Parks Department in the next few days (with children 12+).

To read the full article, visit www.newyorkfamily.com.

Lamps inside Riverside Park are on 24/7. Photo by Amanda Woods.

By Amanda Woods

Sidewalk lamps in Riverside Park are turned on all day long, burning in broad daylight, and local residents are frustrated.

“My taxpayer money pays for it, and it’s a waste of energy,” said Sharon Walker, an Upper West Side dog walker who often passes through the park.

Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer said her office has fielded several complaints about the lamps over the past two or three years. Leon Sutton, whose apartment between 91st and 92nd streets faces the park, voiced his concerns to Brewer earlier this year.

Brewer, in turn, wrote letters on behalf of Sutton—as well as other residents—to the departments of Parks and Recreation and Transportation about the lamps. When the two departments responded, they gave different reasons explaining why the lights have remained on for so long.

Margaret Forgione, the Manhattan borough commissioner of the Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the lights in Riverside Park, told Sutton in a February letter that the lights are left on because of ongoing construction work at the location.

“Please be advised that during construction work within the parks as well as on the highways, lights are frequently left on during the daytime hours for the purpose of troubleshooting, accessing electrical power and identifying other operational problems or needs,” Forgione wrote.

But Sutton and Walker both said they have not noticed significant construction work in the area.
John Herrold, the Riverside Park administrator for the Parks Department, offered a different explanation in his late March response to Sutton.

“The reason this particular section of lights has been on continuously is that the decades-old lighting infrastructure has begun to fail and the controls no longer turn the lights on and off properly, necessitating a temporary override to ensure there is lighting in the park at night for security while the system is overhauled,” Herrold wrote. “Unfortunately, this manual override also meant that the lights have stayed on during the day.”

Sutton doesn’t think the process should take this long, though.

“I’m a real estate developer,” he said. “If this was any private owner’s property, he would have found the answer to this a long time ago. Controls to lights can be located or fixed. This is not rocket science.”

Brewer and Olive Freud, the vice president of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, believe there is an alternative to the electric lights in the park that would solve the day-burning problem. When they attended a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is entirely powered by solar lights, they realized that solar power would be a good fit for Riverside Park as well.

“If they do solar, it seems to me that it would be less complicated,” Brewer said. They don’t have to plug into anything. There is a little solar apparatus in the lamp itself, and it looks great.”

Brewer submitted her most recent complaint letter about the day-burning lights to Herrold on Friday, in which she requested that he consider powering the park with solar lights.

Freud said she would like to place a demonstration model of a solar-powered lamp in the park so that passersby could learn more about the alternative power source. She is adamant that the electric street lights in the park have to go.
“It seems to me like a no-brainer,” Freud said. “It’s a terrible waste of electricity, and there is a substitute.”

Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons

New Yorkers and other state visitors are again free to smoke around various state parks, pools, beaches and historic sites after the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation suspended an early April smoking ban on these locales. The smokers’ rights group NYC C.L.A.S.H. officially challenged the smoking ban policy on May 1st. The group claimed the Parks Department acted outside its authority in bypassing legislature and passing the ruling, including putting the ban into effect nine days prior to state prescribed submission of a notice of proposed rule. Other arguments by NYC C.L.A.S.H. against the ban, pertaining to civil rights and misinterpretation of the law, have arisen as well.

(By Alissa Fleck)

The Parks Department continues to discourage smoking despite the ban suspension through intimidation—many signs prohibiting smoking remain in place, though they are now intentionally misleading. NYC C.L.A.S.H. is pushing for these signs to be removed as well.

“The crusade against smokers to date has so emboldened government that the rule of law no longer need be practiced when it comes to its citizens that choose to smoke. So far this free-for-all indicates that the Office of Parks is acting as a surrogate for activists’ anti-smoker experiment,” said NYC C.L.A.S.H. founder, Audrey Silk. “The signage alone, should it remain in place, is now ideological in its coercion for compliance with a moral, rather than a legal, dictate.”

According to Associate Counsel Kathleen Martens of the Parks Department, another rule banning smoking could be in the works. First, however, the department will need to consult the NYS Clear Indoor Air Act for current smoking restrictions to avoid the same legal hurdles they face now.

Silk has retained an attorney and promises to continue fighting what she sees as abuse of the legal process by the Parks Department. “Possibly they figure that no one else will care since it’s ‘only’ about smokers. But when government bureaucracies are allowed to get away with breaking the law, it’s the law itself that suffers and, next thing you know, it will ‘only’ be about some activity you enjoy or some group you belong to,” said Silk.

Among them were common blue violet (Viola sororia), a stemless perennial with heart-shaped leaves; yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), a low-growing plant with shamrock-like leaves and small yellow flowers; and poor man’s pepper (Lepidium virginicum), which tasted like mustard. All three would be delicious in a salad and some are also good for making soups, Brill said.

“They are weeds that reproduce themselves, and that’s why we can eat them,” he said, adding that people always used weeds for cooking. As the tour progressed, he cited historical anecdotes. Poor man’s pepper got its name back in the days when real pepper was imported from Asia and thus was expensive. “People used it because they needed to cover up the taste of rotten food or starve to death,” Brill said.

“This is my apocalypse plan,” said Sarah Anderson, originally from Utah and now a New York resident, explaining what drew her to the event. She added she was only half-kidding.

Participants also chewed on vanillatasting flowers from a black locust tree and dug up sassafras roots as Brill shared a recipe for root beer. Ignacio Parkman, age 4, said “that lemony one was my favorite,” referring to wood sorrel. Another participant, Bill Gallagher, found a plant Brill never saw growing in Central Park before: catnip.

Brill also pointed out poisonous species to stay away from, such as white snake root (Eupatorium rugosum) with dark green opposite leaves. “It stops your brain from communicating with your heart and lungs,” Brill said.

Not everyone supports foraging in city parks, though. The New York City park authorities are concerned about residents harvesting from the parks, and have always been. In 1980s, Brill was arrested for foraging. Later he appeared on David Letterman’s show, where he humorously described how he was handcuffed but eventually let go because he had “eaten all the evidence.” The charges were later dropped and Brill was allowed to continue foraging, although there is no such thing as an official permit. “They just look the other way,” he said.

“We don’t condone what he does,” said Vickie Karp of the City of New York Parks and Recreation press office. She added that foraging can be dangerous. “Some plants can be poisonous,” she said.

There is also a concern that aggressive foraging may affect the park’s natural habitats. “Every plant should be left in its place so that Central Park’s 38 million annual visitors can enjoy everything about its landscapes while they’re here,” said Maria Hernandez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy.

Brill emphasized that he teaches responsible foraging. He harvests plants that regenerate and digs up tree sprouts that won’t grow because they are under a bigger tree. He also brings attention to poisonous species, including those that are edible early in the season or have to be cooked properly to dispose of the toxins. “I’ve been picking the same things in the same place for 30 years,” he said. Brill does not have a degree in botany, but believes in reconnecting with nature.

“I learned it all on my own,” he said. “I’m a science geek.” He leads foraging tours in other boroughs, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. Originally from Queens, he now lives in Westchester.

“There’s plenty to eat there,” he said.

“They have a lot of issues,” said City Council Member Gale Brewer, who has been an advocate for the Boat Basin community and is helping broker the latest round of talks between the residents and Parks.

“They want to have more boats year-round, they want to make sure that when they have to plug into the electrical grid, the Parks Department is not taking an administration fee. The biggest issue is with their permit fees,” Brewer said. Currently, the permit fees for the year is $196 per linear foot of a boat. Boats vary in size, but many that are large enough to live on full-time are around 40 feet, meaning that an average yearly fee is around $7,840, or $653 a month. While that’s a bargain rate for rent on the Upper West Side, some boat owners also pay mortgages on their boats, and many residents are retired and on fixed incomes. Parks has proposed raising the permit fees, to $225 per linear foot, bringing the example average up to $750 a month, a 15 percent increase. Parks also plans to raise rates for parking, storage and some other services.

“Certain fees are being increased in high demand service areas that will help pay for the costs of operating the marinas, including structural repairs and maintenance,” said Parks Department spokesperson Phil Abramson. “Marina fees have not been increased over the last four years and will remain far lower than the rates charged at privately owned marinas.”

The new rates would go into effect in May 2013.

Several current residents of the Boat Basin declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the ongoing negotiations with the Parks Department over the fees and other issues. Famed civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel has been representing the Boat Basin tenants for several years, winning victories in the past when residents pushed for better protection from ice floating in the river and restoring several slips to be made available for permanent residents. Prior to the 1987, there were over 100 boats docked at the Boat Basin full time, but the Parks Department stopped issuing permits for permanent residents in Boat Basin Café and a longtime Upper West Side resident, said that he remembers when the neighborhood wasn’t safe and the Boat Basin was in terrible condition.

“I’ve lived in a rent-stabilized apartment for 40 years,” O’Neal said. “This area was packed with drug addicts. We were sort of pioneers, and those people [at the Boat Basin] were part of it.”

Even now, he said, when the fees are a comparative bargain for the neighborhood, it’s not all easy living.

“It’s an extraordinary place that inspired me to become a naturalist and a science teacher and a nature writer,” said former resident Leslie Day, who lived at the Boat Basin for 36 years before moving recently to an apartment on solid ground in Washington Heights. Day and her husband raised their son there and still keep their boat docked and go back during summer days.

“When my son was born in 1980 … it was a wonderful live-aboard community,” Day said. “The community is nowhere near what it was when it was such a thriving and wonderful place, and that’s sad.”

The decline in year-round boaters is partly due to older, longtime residents leaving; it’s no constant party to live on a boat.

Jill Baker, an artist and writer who set her novel at the Boat Basin, lived there in the ’80s and remembers it as a feisty community of artists who had to bear a lot of negatives to enjoy the benefits.

“The river is really rough in the winter— it has a lot of ice and cold, cold wind,” Baker said. “I can remember walking down to the boat with a big canvas for a painting, and it acted like a sail and I almost didn’t make it. It was whipping around and trying to blow me back.”

“There was a nor’easter in December 1992 where it rained for three days and the river actually came up over the West Side Highway,” Day remembers. “Many boats sank that night, the ones tied to the pilings of the fixed dock. People lost their homes. That was terrifying.”

Now some are afraid of losing their homes to other outside forces, like creeping rates and poor conditions at the Boat Basin. One of the biggest needs there is for dredging the Hudson River to clear away the silt build-up that makes it all but impossible to maneuver watercraft except during high tide. The analysis of the project alone, which would require the cooperation of state and federal environmental agencies, would cost several million dollars, and the actual dredging would be much more. Much of it is out of the hands of the Parks Department, which has been making other improvements over the past several years, said Abramson, the agency spokesperson.

“Parks has invested significantly in the wholesale upgrade of the 79th Street Boat Basin in the past eight years, including floating docks and electrical and plumbing complete line replacements as well as upgrades in the outer wave wall and ice protection systems,” he said. “Most of these improvements were in direct response to the concerns of boaters who use the facility.”

Now those boaters await their fates as they try to negotiate with Parks to keep their beloved community livable.

As Ed Bacon, a longtime resident who runs a charter yacht company and publishes the Boat Basin Bulletin, wrote in his inaugural 2008 issue of the newsletter, the assembled drifters at the Boat Basin have become a group of bonded Upper West Siders who want to keep their way of life afloat.

“This community has become like the suburbs,” Bacon wrote. “Instead of neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs, we have mooring fields and docks.”

The tennis bubble of Sutton East Tennis continues to cover the Queensboro Oval.

For much of the year, the Queensboro Oval park under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge is rented out to a concessionaire to operate a tennis bubble. But for the past several years, every spring the giant bubble is dismantled to make way for softball and baseball leagues. This year, however, the Parks Department has decided to shave six weeks off the ball-playing season and give that time to the Sutton East Tennis Club, a move that has some Upper East Side residents seeing red.

Two years ago, the Parks Department backed off of a plan to allow the tennis bubble to remain operational all year after strong opposition from the community, allowing sports groups access to the space for four months every summer. The community didn’t find out about the recently determined extended tennis season until it was announced at a Community Board 8 committee meeting two weeks ago, and the full board strongly condemned the move, resolving to ask the Parks Department to extend the baseball permit season by six weeks into the fall to compensate for the lost time.

“I feel that it is a slap in the face to the parks committee, to CB 8, to the users of the field and to the people of the community board, not only 8 but 6, and other residents of the city who have seen this grow and grow and grow—this beast taking over a public park in your community,” said resident Bradley Cohen at the meeting.

Cohen said he couldn’t get an answer for weeks on why his request for a permit for ball playing was delayed, even though the Parks Department was in the middle of negotiating this new arrangement.

Parks Department Assistant Commissioner Betsy Smith, who has agreed to attend the upcoming CB 8 Parks Committee meeting on Thursday, April 26 to answer questions, said in a statement that the reason the Department decided to extend the tennis season was that “the Sutton East Tennis Club had already made a substantial investment to convert the bubble to a year-round operation based on the execution of the contract amendment and its registration by the comptroller.

“It was therefore prudent to address the legitimate concerns raised by the concessionaire, and we reached an agreement with them to extend the indoor season by six weeks,” she said. She also called the ball fields “vastly underused.”

A Parks Department spokesperson said that the tennis bubble will be able to stay up until June 15 every year through 2017, when their current contract expires, and that they do not plan on offering extensions of ball field permits through the fall.

“I object to the Parks Department citing the investment that the tennis club put into the bubble, because the tennis club knows full well how the community feels about the availability of the park to the neighborhood. Calling for the need to be compensated for making improvements is disingenuous,” said board member Sarah Chu at the meeting, a sentiment that many others echoed.

The Community Board also voted to ask the Parks Department to require that the tennis club restore the park to its original state when they dismantle the bubble, and many members expressed dismay over the way the Department handled the entire situation.

Geoffrey Croft, who runs the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates, said it’s particularly frustrating because many community members fought so hard against the tennis bubble being allowed to stay up year round and thought they had secured their summer space.

“We successfully fought back against that, and now we find out about another underhanded move, that the city is trying to give this guy a deal because his contract from two years ago fell apart,” Croft said.

It appeared that a majority of the attending public were against this rule, and many posited that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city were attempting to rid the city’s parks of performers in order to usher in more corporate operations in the vein of the holiday market currently open in Union Square.

William Castro, the Manhattan Borough commissioner for the Department of Parks and Recreation, attended the meeting and opened it with a few remarks. He maintained that the rules are misunderstood and said that the city isn’t attempting to ban performers. He noted that the city recognizes the importance of having performers in the park, but added that they hope to better regulate their activities to make parks vibrant and safe places for all. While some have argued that, due to the plethora of monuments in Washington Square Park, it is difficult—if not impossible—for a busker to find a legal spot to perform, Castro noted that there were many acceptable places, including the Garibaldi Stage.

Robert Lederman, president of Artists Response to Illegal State Tactics(ARTISTS), noted that he had visited the park with a tape measure and couldn’t find a spot that was 50 feet away from a monument. He believes the city hopes to make room for corporate vending.

“These rules seem to have come all of the sudden,” said Doris Diether, co-chair of CB2’s Landmarks and Public Aesthetics Committee. Deither, a longtime resident of the area, pointed out that musicians have been a fixture of the park since the 1950s.

Colin Huggins, known for playing a grand piano in the park, called himself “the big ticket winner” in terms of the amount he has been fined for performing. He noted that at minimum, he owed over $2,000, which he had to pay over a six-week period, but many generously donated to him to cover the costs.

Joe Mangrum, the artist responsible for the sand art pieces found in the park, said that when he first moved to New York City he was surprised by the freedom for self-expression and said that sense of freedom propels art in public spaces. “By killing this art, the park will be more vacant as a result,” he added.

Of course, a meeting involving themes of self-expression had to end on an artistic flourish with the opera singer Katie Kat, a masters student and adjunct professor of voice at New York University, belting out a musical piece in Italian. Kat, one half of the Opera Under the Arch duet, said she has been busking since she was a teenager and that for many artists in the park, public performance offers a chance for their talents to be discovered.

The Parks, Recreation and Open Space board is set to reconvene Jan. 14, 2012, at which point, noted board members, a resolution concerning these regulations will most likely be brought up. In the meantime, community members can send their comments to washingtonsquareparkspeakout@gmail.com.

Citizens Polled on Living Wage

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 74 percent of New Yorkers are in favor of the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, also known as the Living Wage bill. In a statement, Living Wage NYC said of the poll results, “This sentiment reaches across political lines, as a whopping 56 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats agree that the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act would benefit the city—results consistent with an earlier Baruch College living wage poll.”

1,242 registered voters were polled Dec. 7 through Dec. 12. The Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act would make the minimum hourly wage for workers hired by companies that receive more than $1 million in city subsidies $10 per hour plus benefits or $11.50 without benefits.

The outdoor terrace of Tavern on the Green is going to become home to a number of food vendors starting Oct. 15, according to the Parks Department.

The famed eatery served its final meal at the end of 2009 and the city bandied a couple of suggestions around for the space (including hosting bike rentals there), before settling on renting the place out to food vendors.

Food offerings will include selections from Ladle of Love, Pera Mediterranean Brasserie, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck and Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream.

The city is giving the vendors a one-year contract for the space with an option to renew.

At some point they would like to get a full-time restaurant into the space.

“We’re going to offer a new request for proposals for the space at some point in the future that hasn’t been decided yet,” said Phil Abramson, a Parks Department spokesperson.

A simple request for cyclists to dismount along a short stretch of bike path in Riverside Park has been causing contention among park goers this summer.

A woman rides her bike down a path and past a sign in Riverside Park where riders are asked to dismount and walk their bikes.

In June, the Parks Department installed signs bearing the message “Cyclists must dismount” along the path that connects West 72nd Street and Riverside Drive with the Waterfront Greenway along the Hudson River. The area is home to a popular dog run and is frequently used by dog-walkers, pedestrians and cyclists who vie for control of the 5-foot wide path. Safety concerns prompted the Parks Department to put up the signs, but many cyclists aren’t obeying them and irate riders have torn down some of the signs.

Cristina DeLuca of the Parks Department confirmed the problems that people are having with the signs, and said in a statement, “We are working to accommodate multiple, competing park uses in very limited space. Cycling is an activity we fully support and will continue to encourage, but our first priority is always safety.”

Council Member Gale Brewer advocated for the installation of the signs in an attempt to make the park safer for children, seniors, dog walkers and cyclists as well.

“We were shocked that the signs had been taken down at night,” she said.

Her office is organizing a meeting with community members to figure out a more permanent solution to the problems along the path.

On a recent Monday morning in the park, some cyclists dutifully dismounted, and an equal number ignored the signs, though all rode at safe speeds and steered away from pedestrians.

Kristina Kreber walks her dog in the park three times a day, and said that some cyclists make it unsafe.

“I ride my bike also, so I kind of straddle the issue,” Kreber said. “It would be less of a volatile issue if they would just say to bikers, ‘Can you please be more considerate?’”

Ren Tarpley rides her bike recreationally and walks it through the designated area. She said that the problem comes from large groups of cyclists on the weekends, not the occasional lone biker. “You see the bike tours coming through, there are like 30 of them, and they don’t dismount.”

She thinks the signs are a good idea, but only if people obey them.

Jeff Dedrick, another cyclist walking the path with his bike, said that while he normally rides slowly around pedestrians and doesn’t cause problems, he is fine with the signs and the dismount rule.

“I understand pedestrians are concerned,” he said. His wife hates it when bikes whiz by on the narrow paths.

While some are happy to see the signs up, it’s unclear how the Parks Department will enforce the new rule.

Tila Dunhaime, of bicyclist group Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign, said that the signs don’t address more important and complicated issues of how city residents can share space effectively.

“I don’t think that the Parks Department did its homework in terms of establishing that there was a problem and considering a number of solutions,” Dunhaime said.

She emphasized the need for using the “3 E’s”—engineering, education and enforcement—to create viable bike paths, teach people how to use them safely and punish those who don’t.

Dunhaime said that enforcement should come not just from the Parks Department or the NYPD, but that we need “law-abiding cyclists to put peer pressure on the ones who are being jerks. To just lay down the long arm of the law and say everyone has to get off their bikes right now is a backwards way of looking at the problem.”

The city’s Parks Department recently installed public benches at sections of the Broadway Mall, the median that separates the two lanes of Broadway.

Left to right: Mark Vaccaro, Parks Department manager, Parks Department Borough Commissioner William Castro, Council Member Gale Brewer, Bev Bartow of the Broadway Mall Association and Brad Romaker, Administrative project manager for the Parks Department. Photo By Andrew Schwartz.

Five sets of benches have been installed at the malls bordering Broadway’s intersections with West 79th, 86th and 91st streets. These latest amenities resulted from the efforts of the Parks Department and the Broadway Mall Association, a non-for-profit tasked with the beautification of Broadway’s green spaces.

The Broadway Mall’s new seating arrangements are custom-built to replicate the “World Fair” benches of 1948, with bright wood planking and no arm or back rests. Each set of benches arcs in a semicircle, allowing residents to face each other during conversation. The benches were built with their foot-ins straddling the mall’s subway grate, increasing the semicircular diameter to accommodate more people.

The benches were designed by engineer Tim Lynch and Brad Romaker, the administrative project manager from the Parks Department.

After backing their installation in several community board meetings, Council Member Gale Brewer called the benches “fabulous” and “absolutely gorgeous.”

“I have received so many calls, and people have been very positive about them,” Brewer said while viewing the West 86th Street benches.