Manhattan

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.

It looks like the City's promise to build out the bike network is already bearing fruit. Streetsblog reader Alex Kahl sends along these photos of new bike lane markings being striped on W. 77th and W. 78th Street near Columbus Avenue. Unlike the new, Class III, "shared lane" markings spotted yesterday in the middle of Clinton Street near Delancey, it looks like these are going to be Class II lanes running along the side of the street. 

Overheard in the comments section. If anyone has photos of the new stencils or has seen police enforcing bike lanes in a similar way, snap a photo and send it to Streetsblog:

You know that a change in the zeitgeist is afoot when Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's transportation policy conference tomorrow provides fodder for the New York Post's Page Six:

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is holding a day-long forum on Manhattan's transportation future. Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogota, Colombia, will be the keynote speaker. This should be a great event. Peñalosa is the inspiring and visionary politician who transformed his city of 7 million into a model for sustainable urban transportation.

In the aftermath of September 11th, concrete and steel barriers sprouted like  mushrooms around big buildings in New York City. It almost seemed to me to be a kind of status symbol. You knew you worked in an important building if your landlord had hardened it against truck bombs.

Today is International Park(ing) Day. Also known as a "parking squat," Park(ing) is a quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings. Here is how Park(ing) Day is being celebrated this morning in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street:

Orcutt wrote:

kablooey wrote: