City Issues Death Sentence to Union Street Planters

It looks like the city is saying no to several planters on Union Street in Park Slope. The concrete planters near Seventh Avenue contained small evergreen trees. News was posted over at Brooklynian:

The city in it's infinite wisdom has revoked the permits we had for the planters along union street. They have given us 30 days to remove the concrete planters. The reason they gave was that there must be no obstructions on city property. Since the sidewalks are owned by the city, we must remove the planters that have been there for over 25 years. So in 30 days, the planters from BHS all the way to Tasti-d-lite and the bench will be removed.

The planters across the street at 92-7th Avenue will also have to be removed, because they were on the same permit. So say goodbye to the planters from Bank of America down to NuNu Gallery. If anyone knows how to stop this, please do so. It's a shame that there will be no plant life allowed on these corners.

Not everyone is with the trees, however. There is a bit of a discussion about whether the planters were, well, ugly and might be replaced with something nicer. Otherwise, it does seem to be a rather arbitrary decision.

Street Films on the New Dumbo Pearl Street Triangle Space

Check out the Street Films vid and blog post about the new Pearl Street Triangle space in Dumbo and the city's project to transform 30 streets into public spaces. As one would expect, Dumbo NYC has had great coverage of the project.

Send Your Nasty Newsrack Pics to "Outrage!"

The way things go from day to day in Brooklyn and New York City generally, "Outrage!" could refer to everything from the construction site next door to a plan to toss food vendors from a local park. In this case, it's a photo contest being run by the Municipal Art Society, which is looking for the "dirtiest, most unkempt, most repulsive newsracks in New York City." We'll let the MAS explain:

The streets of New York City are littered with filthy, poorly maintained and decrepit newsracks that are both eyesores and potentially hazardous to New Yorkers.

Paris, London, Berlin and Amsterdam don't tolerate this scourge on their streets, and Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami Beach, Houston and San Francisco have cracked down on the newsrack blight too. But New York City continues to tolerate it, and we think this is outrageous!

Ridding our streets of these nasty newsracks is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, and the Municipal Art Society needs your help. Submit your photographs of the dirtiest, most unkempt, most repulsive newsracks in New York City to our OUTRAGE! contest and help persuade elected officials that filthy newsracks are rotting the Big Apple and that they must commit to regulating them.

Contestants are invited to submit multiple photograph entries of the most disgusting newsracks they can find in the five boroughs (amusing caption optional) with cross-street details of where the offending newsracks are. Photos of newsrack eyesores that are also illegally placed (within 15 feet of a fire-hydrant, in a bus-stop, within 5 feet of a corner area, etc., will be given special consideration!) The winner will be rewarded for finding the worst newsrack in the city with a $100 gift certificate for Urban Center Books.

So, grab your camera, hit the streets and send something perfectly horrible to newsrack (at) mas (dot) org, and we'll pick the winning photo on the basis of sheer ugliness! Deadline for entries is Friday, September 14, 2007. Flickr users tag your pictures nastynewsracks or join our Nasty Newsracks group.

A couple of months ago, we ran a post about a solution that the Park Slope Civic Council is working on in Park Slope that has a lot of merit. The MAS push could help create sentiment for a solution.

The Street Couch Series: Saturday Edition

Here's the second installment in this week's Street Couch Series. This, too, comes from the sofa-filled sidewalks of Williamsburg. We call this one Sofa with Hanging Bicycle.

Park Slope Tree Guards Multiply Quickly

Workers have been toiling at installing these tree guards in Park Slope this spring, particularly along Prospect Park West, Eighth Avenue and, recently, Fifth and Sixth Streets. We don't know how many have been installed, or will be, but you'll know they're coming to a tree near you by the square boxes painted on the sidewalk around the trees long before the work is done. Some people are taking advantage of the new space around trees by doing mini-landscaping and planting. The one negative we'll note is that they take up an awful lot of sidewalk space, but we're sure that both the trees and the sidewalks will do better with them in place. Money for the tree guards comes through the Borough President's office.

Say What?: Williamsburg Stop Sign Edition

We have walked past this stop sign too many times to count. We haven't seen it. In fact, we're running it as part of our challenged signage feature because, well, it might escape your notice unless you're sitting in the cab of a tractor trailer or about ten feet tall. And, even then, you might not see it. This beauty is attached to the scaffolding on the new building called Seven Berry that has been rising for a loooong time at the corner of N. 7th and Berry. Our special correspondent laid it on us. She has very good eyes.

GL welcomes your informational tips, your images and your contributions in all shapes and forms. If you've got something for us, email us at thegowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com.

New Bus Shelters Appear on Columbia Street: Good or Bad?

Among the many places those new glassy bus shelters have popped up in recent weeks is Columbia Street in Red Hook. We're still not sure how we feel about them as part of the streetscape, although we suppose we more like them than not. We like that they're labeled as to location of the stop, which is a help to riders who may not know the bus route they're using, and we think they're nicer than the shelters they replace. Regardless, we might as well get used to them as 3,300 of them will be installed over time.

Park Slope to Try New, Improved News Boxes

Call them newspaper condos. At some point soon, a "modular distribution box" will be coming to the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street designed to address the issue of dozens of individual news boxes at the intersection. (There are, for instance, 14 boxes near Smiling Pizza at Seventh and 9th.) The "news box clutter" issue is not unique to Park Slope or to Brooklyn. Seek out a busy New York City streetcorner, especially ones with subway entrances, and you'll find dozens of boxes serving as everything from, well, newspaper distribution boxes to trash receptacles.

In any case, the Park Slope Civic Council is teaming up with a firm called CitySolve for a demonstration project, with each footing the bill for half the cost of the $2,000 newspaper condo. Each box holds eight papers, including free ones. They are designed with sloping tops so that people can't leave things on top of them and with graffiti-proof surfaces. Given the First Amendment issues involved, publishers are asked beforehand to participate in the demonstration project. The ultimate goal is to get the city to fund placement of the newspaper condos as a streetscape improvement measure. Could be a winner.