Eyes on the Street

It seems each year the number of people bicycling to Coney Island's annual Mermaid Parade grows. This year was particularly bike plentiful with thousands of bikes locked to poles, fences, signs, and over a dozen blocks of the boardwalk railing. Even bikes locked to other bikes!

To accompany Clarence Eckerson's StreetFilm, here are some images from the first annual Make Music New York event...

A tipster sends along this snapshot of the parking lot... I mean, sidewalk, outside the High Bridge Recreational Center prior to the meeting last night to discuss plans for the revitalized High Bridge. The talk inside, she says, "was much more encouraging" than the government employee parking situation outside.

Ian Dutton of the Houston Street bike safety initiative snapped these photographs of yet another never-before-seen street design feature here in New York City. This is what's called a "Bike Box" at the  intersection of W. 9th St. and Sixth Ave. Bike boxes allow cyclists approaching the intersection with a red signal to position themselves at the front of the line of vehicles. This makes bike travel faster and the right turn onto northbound Sixth Avenue safer.

The Shuttle, as seen from Brevoort Place.

This was the scene along the Edward L. Grant Highway in the Bronx on May 27, where the southbound buffered bike lane near Jerome Avenue was being blocked by SUVs from Florida and New Jersey and assorted other vehicles. The bike lane markings here are worn out by the constant wear and tear of automobile tires. A complete lack of enforcement makes this bike lane inadequate for cycling and a great benefit for auto mechanics and double-parkers.

East 146th Street and St. Ann's Avenue, May 28, 2007.

 The NYC Transit Pipe and Drums Corps marched in the Inwood annual Memorial Day Parade on Monday, on a route that followed Broadway from 200th Street almost into the Bronx before taking Seaman Avenue, where the above photo was taken, to Inwood Hill Park for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring America's war dead.