Upcoming: United Friends of McCarren Park Meeting

The United Friends of McCarren Park (UFMP) group is having a meeting on Tuesday (4/29) at 7PM about (of course) McCarren Park. Per an email: "We’re a new group with the ambition of serving McCarren Park users, existing community groups and working with other parks groups in the area. With the influx of new park users and summer approaching this is a great time to get involved!" The meeting takes place at the Polish National Home/Warsaw, which is located at 261 Driggs Avenue at Eckford Street in Room 9 on the Second Floor.

Protesting Exxon Mobil's Sponsorship of Go Green Greenpoint

Yesterday's protest against Exxon Mobil's role in helping to sponsor the Earth Day event in McCarren Park, was quite visually interesting and attended by some media and the police. Here are a few photos posted to flickr by amc_. The company's role was controversial, of course, given the huge spill of oil under Greenpoint that Exxon is responsible for cleaning up. One of the people involved in the protest emailed us to say:

We went to the event and held our political theater right in front of the exxon mobil booth. Most people were supportive, but the funniest part of the day for me was when the exxon employees tried to mitigate the seriousness of their company's actions by assuring us that they had already cleaned up less than a third of what has been seeping into the greenpoint community for 50 years!

There was also an interesting email exchange about the protest from an unidentified person that appears connected to the organizer of the Go Green Greenpoint event:

It is extremely poor form to try to disrupt what promises to be a very nice, grassroots event put on by your and my friends and neighbors. While there is certainly a place for protest and disobedience, I do not think that a positive, community-focused event is the appropriate place. Perhaps a more constructive action and presence would be to have worked with the event organizers to set up a booth educating Greenpointers and others of the hazards associated with the Exxon (and other) spills, and the oils companies' responsibility (both moral and legal) to clean it up. The Town Square group has been working day and night for months to put this event together, to provide a positive, ecologically-oriented event for Earth Day. It is a shame that you are trying so hard to mar and counteract their efforts.

An there was this response from one of the organizers of the protest:

I respect the work of the Town Square Group, and in addition to static informational booths we will offer a roving street theater performance with informational fliers about the oil spill and the greenwashing epidemic. We are artists and this is how we can positively contribute to an ecologically themed event for Earth Day - educating the public in a non-didactic way. Nothing in my email implied "disobedience", and please put it in perspective. It's not ok for some of the very worst environmental offenders in the US to sponsor Earth Day in a community where they are responsible for incredible environmental disasters. This is the very definition of greenwashing. I don't believe that their aide is necessary to pull off a local environmental celebration. They do not deserve positive publicity when so many of local community groups are engaged in a lawsuit with them for the harm that they've done.

Just another day in North Brooklyn.

Upcoming Reminder: Go Green! Greenpoint! Earth Day

We've posted this before, but Town Square's Go Green Greenpoint! Earth Day event is taking place tomorrow (4/19) from 11AM-4PM in McCarren Park. Per an email:

"Go Green Greenpoint!" is going to be a lot of fun - enviro-friendly vendors, food, music, art contests, recycling stations and much more! School, companies, government agencies and community groups will also be showcasing educational displays. There'll be live music on stage all day along with chess stations and wellness classes.

There's also electronics recycling for computers, monitors, laptops, digital cameras, etc.

McCarren Park "Yankee Stadium Lights" Turned Off

This is McCarren Park, as seen from Union Street at Bayard on Tuesday night in a photo sent to us by blogger Bad Advice. The lights were being tested and were left on all night and into yesterday afternoon, but we can report they were turned off at some point last night, possible after a lot of calls to 311 and their appearance on Curbed. Regardless, they promise some bright, bright nights around the park. They were installed recently around the running track and soccer field across Bayard Street from the expensive condos on Karl Fischer Row. Here is an email we got about them yesterday, from a neighbor, but not someone living in the new Karl Fischer Row condos:

The McCarren Park Flood Lights around the field are finally installed and were turned on last night. All six of them (looks like Yankee stadium). But quite interestingly they have been on all night and all day today. What is the cut off time is my question?

Last night I couldn't get a wink in because the lights flooded our apt. Indeed. incredibly bright...At 5 am, I called 311 to complain to find no number that we could call to get them turned off. Just a women saying that they have to resolve the situation in 10 days. 10 days of this and I will be going nuts. Curtains just don't cut it.

They are still on now. A waste of electricity!!! Last night it was pelting with ice at 3am. If any of those bulbs busted, that's precious tax payers money. I guess it would have been good for us residents if the lights busted anyway.

The lighting plan has apparently been in place for years, long before the condos of Karl Fischer Row were ever built. We wonder how many buyers were told they'd be lighting up the night outside.

Bklinks: McCarren Park Meeting Tomorrow

It's worth noting again there's a meeting coming up to organize a new McCarren Park group to help push for a lot of improvements and changes to the park. It takes place at Automotive High School at 50 Bedford Ave. on Monday night at 7PM.--New York Shitty

New McCarren Park Group Forming

We were going to categorize this as an "Upcoming" event, but it's more than that because the meeting is about forming a group tentatively called United Friends of McCarren Park that will try to build support for and work on a variety of McCarren Park-related issues. An email has gone out from the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks & Planning (GWAPP) about the meeting, which will take place on Monday (3/3) at 7PM at Automotive High School on Bedford Avenue. The email says in part:

The best way to get the parks we deserve is through persistent community attention to each park. GWAPP...wants to help kickstart a big (and sustained) Push for Parks all across our North Brooklyn neighborhoods by helping to create (where one doesn’t exist) support (where one does exist) and unite (where, as with McCarren Park, several active groups co-exist) park-specific Friends Groups.

The purpose of these groups will be to gather information about the way the community uses the park, the issues and needs of each park and, most importantly, establish a community representative (or two or six or twenty) of that park, acting as a watchdog and persistently (key word) pushing for improvements – whether from the city, the Open Space Alliance (www.openspacealliancenb.org), neighbors, local businesses, grants…

I am volunteering to help set up an initial meeting of what, for now, might be called the United Friends of McCarren Park. We have an opportunity, with this particular Mayor and the promises made regarding the McCarren Park Pool, Ice Skating Rink and SkatePark, to push for real improvements in McCarren Park. We need to make sure we have a unified and coherent voice in the way the park is maintained and plans made for future developments. With the Pool reconstruction underway (design-wise at least) it seems the various user-groups of this potentially wonderful park have a shared purpose. Let’s use it to make the park better.

Among the issues up for discussion are: requesting a comprehensive survey & study of park usage & potential, a status update on the McCarren Pool project, seeing if "comfort stations" adjacent to the pool can be rebuilt first, seeing if the park's wading and spray pool can be running by summer and the fascinating topic of "Fieldhouse 'Comfort Stations'--the most disgusting bathrooms in Brooklyn?" Also up for discussion are benches & paths, gardens & trees, dog runs, a plan to put artificial turf on a paved field next to the park's tennis courts, a plan to study de-mapping Driggs and/or Union Avenue through the park and entertainment programming, which is enough for a 12-hour meeting. The emails says that "Anyone interested in working together to improve McCarren Park is welcome."

Gowanus Lounge Photo Du Jour: McCarren Clown

McCarren Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

McCarren Park Set to Be 10,000% Brighter at Night

The lighting project in McCarren Park has made major progress! The floodlights around the soccer field in McCarren Park, which will light up the night sky outside the expensive condos of Karl Fischer Row on Bayard Street, have been put up. We don't know if they've been turned on yet, but they should be easy to spot from a great distance, just like the ones around the baseball fields in the more western part of the park. Blackout curtains, anyone?

Upcoming: Williamsburg Parks & Open Space Meeting Today

We've posted before about the "Town Hall" meeting sponsored by the Greenpoint Waterfront Assocation for Parks & Planning at Warsaw on January 17 at 7PM (261 Driggs Ave.). But, it's important enough to note again. (There's a small article in Metro today about it as well.) Here's a bit from the original email announcing it:

The neighborhoods of Greenpoint/ Williamsburg are at a point of crisis and opportunity. Crisis because rampant development threatens what little open space and parks we have. Promises of additional open space made in the 2005 rezoning have never materialized. However, opportunities abound. We have promises made for terrific park facilities all over the neighborhood. We just have to make it happen....Here’s a sneak peak at the agenda:

* What is GWAPP? * TGE power plant fight *Sludge tank status * India Street End Park Project * Transmitter Park (end of Greenpoint Ave) *Bushwick Inlet park plans * McCarren Park Pool renovation* State Park at N7th * Tree Planting

All important topics.

Open Space Alliance Benefit at McCarren Pool in September

The Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, which will have a big role in the future of North Brooklyn's Parks, including McCarren Park and Pool, will be having a fundraiser at McCarren Pool on September 15. (The group is involved in the McCarren Pool survey that's currently online.) In any case, Jelly NYC, which produces the Sunday shows at the Pool is putting on the benefit show, which will feature GZA performing Liquid Swords, plus Jamie Lidell. Tickets are $19, you can get them at Other Music or Turntable Lab or at (sigh) Ticketmaster.

Beginning to See the Light in McCarren Park

Those fences you might have noticed sprouting around the soccer field in McCarren Park? They have nothing to do with the Roebling Oil Field, as one GL reader asked. They're part of the installation of night lighting for the fields. Now, there's nothing unique about lighting athletic fields for night play. What makes this endeavor especially interesting, though, is that the lights are going directly across the street from the pricey buildings along Bayard Street, aka Karl Fischer Row. Which will, at the very least, make for some very interesting night views out the windows.