Leave Your iPod at Home Tomorrow

4:28 PM EDT on June 20, 2007

The first annual MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK is coming to New York tomorrow, Thursday, June 21.

For one day, public space throughout the five boroughs -- sidewalks, parks, community gardens, and more -- will become impromptu musical stages, dance floors, and social meeting points for 550 different musical acts.

Time Out New York provides a nice online program guide showing who will be playing where, when.

Make Music New York is based on France's Fete de la Musique, which has been a great success for 25 years. Since it was inaugurated, the festival has become an international phenomenon, celebrated on the same day in 340 cities in 108 countries, including Germany, Italy, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Australia, Vietnam, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Columbia, Chile, Mongolia, and Japan -- everywhere, it seems, except New York.

Make Music New York was instigated and is being organized by classical music composer Aaron Friedman. In 2002 Friedman founded an environmental advocacy group called Silent Majority to combat noise pollution in New York. Funded by Transportation Alternatives, I worked with Friedman to co-author a report called Alarmingly Useless: The Case for Banning Car Alarms in New York City.

Friedman's advocacy and T.A.'s political muscle prompted new legislation in the City Council to regulate car alarms, and lobbying efforts led to the bill's passage in 2004. When Aaron and I are both in the same room at the same time, some people (OK, pretty much just Paul Steely White at Transportation Alternatives) still refer to him as "Car Alarm" and me as "Honker."

So, it looks like "Car Alarm" decided that if he couldn't beat the urban noisemakers, he'd join 'em. Sounds like a good idea.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Stay in touch

More from Streetsblog New York City

Congestion Pricing

Stockholm Leader’s Message to NYC: ‘Congestion Pricing Just Works’

"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."