Eyes on the Street

A community garden. A cyclist. A highrise in the background. Where in New York City is this?

Portland Week continues here on Streetsblog...

These burned-out cars on Washington Square Park were the result of:a) A rowdy Halloween Critical Mass ride on Friday.b) An alternate side of street parking mishap. c) The filming of the next Will Smith movie

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.

''The use of cycles has a place,'' Councilman John Liu recently told the Times. ''But it doesn't come anywhere near the capability of mass transit in making our city greener.''

A Streetsblog tipster notices that Prospect Park motorists seem to be unindoctrinated in the ways of the Litterbug:

After Copenhagen, I visited Holland for a few days as a part of my German Marshall Fellowship. I will be writing more about some of the people I met and spoke with there, but for now I just wanted to share these photos from Amsterdam:

Copenhagen is getting all the attention lately, but it's not the only livable European city with great cycling facilities.