Bicycling

Ride a Bike & Get the World’s Best Cookie Half-Price

While we're seeking great streets, we've found an exemplary store in Manhattan's Build a Green Bakery. This tiny East Village shop sells organic pastries, coffee and tea in an all-sustainable setting. The owner, City Bakery's Maury Rubin, made the space an environmentalists' showroom. He chose walls of wheat and sunflower husks and colored them with a milk-based paint. His floor is cork and his tabletop is responsibly-harvested bamboo, with recycled denim under the display counter. And get this: If you transport yourself to the store by bicycle, you get a 50% discount.

By Alec

4:03 PM EDT on October 13, 2006

While we’re seeking great streets, we’ve found an exemplary store in Manhattan’s Build a Green Bakery. This tiny East Village shop sells organic pastries, coffee and tea in an all-sustainable setting. The owner, City Bakery’s Maury Rubin, made the space an environmentalists’ showroom. He chose walls of wheat and sunflower husks and colored them with a milk-based paint. His floor is cork and his tabletop is responsibly-harvested bamboo, with recycled denim under the display counter. And get this: If you transport yourself to the store by bicycle, you get a 50% discount.

Discounts based on mode of transportation: Adorable quirk or serious public policy model?

Bottom line: There is no better chocolate chip cookie in Manhattan and you’ll need the bicycle to burn off the calories. Build a Green Bakery, 223 First Avenue, Manhattan, (no phone), birdbath@thecitybakery.com.

Alec

Alec Appelbaum writes about New York's outdoor life for the Architect's Newspaper, Metropolis, New York and others. He operates NewYorkerbyNature.com and runs over the East River bridges several times a week. If he gets his act together this summer, he'll buy a bike.