If you build outdoor dining, they will come.
That's the lesson of Friday's "guerrilla" curb-lane café demonstration by livable streets advocates led by Open Plans, which shares a parent organization with Streetsblog.
The Open Plans crew set up curbside tables and chairs in the roadway outside the cafe C&B on E. Seventh Street on Friday afternoon. It didn't take more than a nice breeze and a little sun for passers-by and patrons to fill up the seats,
The demonstration primarily targeted the seasonal restrictions imposed under the city's new outdoor dining law, which requires restaurants relinquish curbside seating for car storage from the beginning of December to the end of March. That only scratches the surface of restaurant owner frustrations with the new program — as Streetsblog reported last week, some local community boards and even one City Council member are working overtime to gum up the works on outdoor dining applications in their districts.
C&B's owner, for his part, is happy the city finally codified its rules and regulations for al fresco set-ups — he just wants to operate year-round.
"I'm actually happy that there's finally clear rules that they want us to follow, which is great. I just don't understand the reasons that they cannot be around all year," Ali Sahin told Streetsfilms' Clarence Eckerson, whose video is below:
"The people that really like it didn't go to those meetings and deliver their feelings. That's generally how it works," Sahin told Hell Gate. "If you have a negative experience you speak, but not everybody made the time."
ABC 7 also covered the guerrilla demo.
Expect to hear more about outdoor dining ahead of June's Democratic mayoral primary. One candidate, Comptroller Brad Lander even attended Friday's demo after sounding the alarm in February about the dramatic decline of the program since the new regulations launched. Disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, lists "reform the outdoor dining permit process" on the issues page on his campaign website, but makes no mention of the seasonal issue. And Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, the politician most responsible for the seasonal regulations, launched her campaign for mayor on Sunday. (Read more about Speaker Adams's poor transportation record here.)
In other news:
- Let 1,000 congestion pricings bloom: A New Jersey Republican running for governor wants to toll New Yorkers to fund NJ Transit. (CBS New York)
- Truckers are still using a Queens neighborhood near JFK Airport as a parking lot and dumping ground. (Gothamist)
- MTA CEO Janno Lieber rode the rails with amNY to tout "dramatic reductions in crime."
- A longtime BQE NIMBY architect has a proposal to keep the highway running through downtown Brooklyn. (Gothamist)
- Sam Schwartz has a better idea: replace the aging triple-cantilever with a narrower highway. (Daily News)
- An alleged hit-and-run killer who cops arrested last month had a record of dangerous driving. (Daily News)
- NTHSA dubs New Jersey the worst state for traffic crashes. (NY Post)
- RPA: The unfunded 2025-2029 MTA Capital Plan will create 72,000 jobs. (Mass Transit Mag)
- An MTA project is cutting off several Bronx shops from local patrons. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning Riverdale Press played it straight; the NY Post went ballistic.
- Anti-Elon Musk protests continued outside city Tesla stores. (NY Post)
- What's that about Citi Bike/moped getaway vehicles? (Daily News)
- A pedestrian was struck and killed on Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island, but the Advance sort of buried the lede: "There have been at least seven pedestrian fatalities since Oct. 31, several of which have occurred on the notoriously treacherous Hylan Boulevard." Seven pedestrians in a small area in five months?!
- It's definitely not easy to campaign for mayor for long hours seven days a week, but Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani learned the hard way that a cute picture doesn't always play well. Welcome to "Burrito-Gate":
A few hours later, Mamdani defended his actions:
