Why is There a Picnic in My Parking Spot?

9:51 AM EDT on September 21, 2007

Park(ing) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, May 6, 2006. The sign says, "Public space reclamation in progress."

Today is International Park(ing) Day, the day when urban dwellers all around the world reclaim on-street parking spaces for purposes more creative and life-affirming than private motor vehicle storage. If you found a bunch of kids playing in an available local parking spot on a grassy, sod carpet, that's why.

Addendum: Transportation Alternatives organized New York City's first Park(ing) event in October 2005. And while Oklahoma City residents staged a similar event in 1935 to protest the introduction of the first parking meters, the generally acknowledged first modern Park(ing) squat took place in Oxford, England in 2003 when a family installed a complete living room in the middle of a residential street and watched Wimbledon on the telly. That particular event ended after an angry local motorist ran his car into their sideboard.

This year, Park(ing) Day ~~started off as a one-off art project in San Francisco just two years ago and~~ has emerged as a widespread grassroots movement to take back city streets from the automobile. There will 50 Park(ing) events in San Francisco, 28 in New York City and scores more in cities all around the world. Streetsblog is looking for photos of Park(ing) events around the city. Please send them to tips@streetsblog.org.

Here's where Park(ing) events are planned in the five boroughs:

The Bronx

High Bridge Area
Southern Blvd. & E. 163rd St.

Brooklyn

Seventh Av. & 1st St.
Bedford Av. bet. N. 4th & 7th Sts.
Carlton & DeKalb Aves.
Cortelyou Rd.
Myrtle Av. bet. Washington & Waverly Aves.

Manhattan

Columbus Av. bet. 83rd & 84th Sts.
Rockefeller Plaza
Times Square
Lincoln Center
Grand Central Terminal
Astor Place
1st St. & First Av.
Penn Station
Stuyvesant
9th St. & Third Av.
Houston St. bet. Second & Third Aves.
Broadway bet. 113th & 114th Sts.
Midtown TBA
563 Columbus Av. (at 87th St.)
Seventh Av. bet. 24th & 26th Sts.
Seventh Av. & Charles St.

Queens

Western Jackson Heights
TBA in Astoria

Staten Island

Everything Goes Book Cafe in Tompkinsville
3 Central Av. near Library

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.

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