Bastille Day on Smith Street is one of my favorite days of the year. It's great fun: the streets are closed, sand is trucked in, and a giant Petanque tournament is held. But the tournament is just an excuse to be there: the real fun is the great food & drink put out by Bar Tabac and other neighborhood restaurants, live music all day long, and hoards of neighborhood folks who come out to spend the day lounging in the streets. This year, Nick Whitaker from Streetfilms and I spent the afternoon filming the event, and the result is the Streetfilm you see above. Can't wait until next year! More on this year's event from Pardon Me for Asking and McBrooklyn. Also, I heard a rumor that there's a time-lapse video of the setup, event, and tear-down from a few years ago that I'll try to get my hands on.
Bastille Day on Smith Street is one of my favorite days of the year. It's great fun: the streets are closed, sand is trucked in, and a giant Petanque tournament is held. But the tournament is just an excuse to be there: the real fun is the great food & drink put out by Bar Tabac and other neighborhood restaurants, live music all day long, and hoards of neighborhood folks who come out to spend the day lounging in the streets. This year, Nick Whitaker from Streetfilms and I spent the afternoon filming the event, and the result is the Streetfilm you see above. Can't wait until next year! More on this year's event from Pardon Me for Asking and McBrooklyn. Also, I heard a rumor that there's a time-lapse video of the setup, event, and tear-down from a few years ago that I'll try to get my hands on.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
Written by
Written by
TOPP
, I'd like to announce the launch of a new website:
, where for a single day, regular parking spaces are "leased" for use as temporary public parks. This year's Park(ing) Day will be held, worldwide, on September 19th. Here's the description from the
On November 16th, 2005, REBAR opened eyes worldwide by transforming a metered parking spot into a park. Locating a site that was underserved by public outdoor space, we installed a small, temporary park that provided nature, seating, and shade. By our calculations, we provided 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that afternoon. See the original PARK(ing) video!
Since the initial PARK(ing) project was created we've been contacted by people worldwide. What began as a simple, playful idea has become a lively and visible symbol of the desire to reprogram the street and increase public open space in cities all over the planet.
TOPP produced the website that supports Park(ing) Day NYC, working with Transportation Alternatives, who is organizing and promoting the event here in NYC. TA is giving out mini-grants of $200 each for Park(ing) spot makers, so apply now. This year's event is also co-sponsored by the EyeBeam Art & Technology Center, who will hopefully encourage some creative submissions.
(For you web geeks out there, the Park(ing) Day NYC site was made using Pylons and jQuery, and was built using the codebase we originally created for Block Party NYC)
Be sure to check out these videos, which are the best way to get the feel for the event.
The original Park(ing) experiment in 2005:
The first Park(ing) Day in SF in 2006: and Park(ing) Day 2007 here in NYC:
Over at The Open Planning Project, we've always had a bit of a hard time explaining what we do. That job just got a little bit easier, with the launch of the new-and-improved TOPP website last Friday. Reactions from within the staff have been remarkably similar: something along the lines of "Phew, now I can finally tell people what the heck it is we do here!'. Kudos to Vanessa, Jackie and Cholmes for distilling a lot of information about our various projects and goals into something remarkably coherent. I'm proud to work at TOPP, and now I have somewhere to point people when I want to show it off :)
TOPP
, I'd like to announce the launch of a new website:
, where for a single day, regular parking spaces are "leased" for use as temporary public parks. This year's Park(ing) Day will be held, worldwide, on September 19th. Here's the description from the
On November 16th, 2005, REBAR opened eyes worldwide by transforming a metered parking spot into a park. Locating a site that was underserved by public outdoor space, we installed a small, temporary park that provided nature, seating, and shade. By our calculations, we provided 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that afternoon. See the original PARK(ing) video!
Since the initial PARK(ing) project was created we've been contacted by people worldwide. What began as a simple, playful idea has become a lively and visible symbol of the desire to reprogram the street and increase public open space in cities all over the planet.
TOPP produced the website that supports Park(ing) Day NYC, working with Transportation Alternatives, who is organizing and promoting the event here in NYC. TA is giving out mini-grants of $200 each for Park(ing) spot makers, so apply now. This year's event is also co-sponsored by the EyeBeam Art & Technology Center, who will hopefully encourage some creative submissions.
(For you web geeks out there, the Park(ing) Day NYC site was made using Pylons and jQuery, and was built using the codebase we originally created for Block Party NYC)
Be sure to check out these videos, which are the best way to get the feel for the event.
The original Park(ing) experiment in 2005:
The first Park(ing) Day in SF in 2006: and Park(ing) Day 2007 here in NYC:
Over at The Open Planning Project, we've always had a bit of a hard time explaining what we do. That job just got a little bit easier, with the launch of the new-and-improved TOPP website last Friday. Reactions from within the staff have been remarkably similar: something along the lines of "Phew, now I can finally tell people what the heck it is we do here!'. Kudos to Vanessa, Jackie and Cholmes for distilling a lot of information about our various projects and goals into something remarkably coherent. I'm proud to work at TOPP, and now I have somewhere to point people when I want to show it off :)
