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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.
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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.

Photo of 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.

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