Over the last
week, I've traveled back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan countless
times. Walking over the Brooklyn
Bridge, riding back on the Manhattan Bridge, strolling from East Broadway to
the streets of South Street Seaport, from the East side of the City to the West
and back again. Along the way, I
constantly revel in the distinct geography of our downtown and its connection
to the distinct neighborhoods of New York. Of course, part of what makes these spaces feel
so alive are the people, interconnecting cultures, and physical spaces from
Chinatown to Wall Street, from Brooklyn to the Lower East Side. The public spaces of these neighborhoods are
in constant flux as we explored throughout this last weekend of talks, theater
performances, walking tours through Death Alley, rarely used privately ownedpublic spaces open for occupation, and vacant lots turned community gardens.
Part of what
made Occupy Wall Street so vital was the connection
to a privately owned public space (POPS) just off Wall Street. This was a
space where people could hang out 24/7. There are hundreds - 525 if you're really
counting- of pops throughout New York city, created as for zoning concessions. For each square food of public space created
in the plazas out front of buildings, they were allowed to increase height and
bulk above. Yet, the building owners rarely wanted the public to fully access
these spaces, at least this was the conclusion of Greg Smithsimon and my book, The
Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York's Public Spaces.
According to the Municipal Arts Society Advocates of the POPS (APOPS) site POPS are:
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| Occupy offered countless joyous moments in the POPS, such as Zuccotti Park. Photo by Giles Clarke |
According to the Municipal Arts Society Advocates of the POPS (APOPS) site POPS are:
plazas,
arcades, and other outdoor and indoor spaces encouraged by concessions offered
to private developers by the City’s zoning resolution since 1961. POPS can make
a valuable contribution to New York City’s livability given their location in
some of the city’s densest neighborhoods.
In 2000, MAS, Harvard University urban planning and
design Professor Jerold Kayden and the Department of City Planning, examined
POPS in the book Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City
Experience.
Although the book described
problems with the design, use, and management of some spaces, it also described
many good spaces scattered throughout the city ...
Visit apops.mas.org to explore our “beta” website about
New York City’s remarkable collection of 525 or so zoning-created plazas,
arcades, and other outdoor and indoor privately owned public spaces.
Kayden's book, detailing the
private sector's constant efforts to encroach upon these public spaces, one
chair, barricade and bench at a time was a profound influence for my work as a
public space advocate. Over time,
walking, pulling together events, riding bikes, organizing street actions, I
saw public spaces continue to be erode after this book was published and New
York became a security zone in the post 9/11 era. The city changed and so did its people. Yet, the craving for public space
remained. And New Yorkers continued to
expand their agora, despite the pressures of real estate and security. Gardens were bulldozed and created once
again. Parks continued to contested
sites, as we learned with the struggles
over the gardens and POPS used by regular people and social movements both before
and after the occupation of Zuccotti Park.
In the years
since I started reading about the tensions over public space, these struggles
only became more and more pronounced. When
we organized Occupy Broadway off a POPS in the theater district, I assumed
we would be back for another performance in another of the pops soon
afterward. But life got in the way,
Occupy evolved, ebbed, flowed, while bike rides and performances took us on
different routes, into different cul de sacs and vacant lots. Friends and groups broke up; police
repression escalated, and it would be another year and a half before we held another
Occupy event in a pops. In the fall of
2012, Brook Sweet organized an event called Hoop for Your POPS in a small POPS
near Wall Street the city was using as a parking lot in violation of zoning
laws. Saturday, May 4th, we would build
on this trajectory with another Hoop for Your POPS event joined by members of
Occupy. I posted on the facebook page:
Hey all! We are starting a campaign to reinvigorate the people's space utilizing Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS, (like our darling Zuccotti) this summer! This kickoff party will be filled with music, puppetry, story telling, games, games and more games, friends and potluck food! Your participation is desired! Come kick us of at New&Exchange on Saturday, May 4th from noon to 5pm! Keep the MayDay spirit flying all wknd! Bring a hula hoop, an instrument, food to share, a story, an idea...
The theme of
public space would dominate the entire weekend of the action. Friday night, I took part in a talk discussion
after Monica's performance of Blondie of Arabia at the Culture
Project, speaking on a panel with some of my favorite activists, some of my favorite people. The play was born after a bike
ride, as we shared stories, tea and coffee after a freezing bike ride. I had spoken at other events around the
play. But this was was my first time
speaking at 45 Bleeker since performing as a Deacon at a church of stop
shopping in the spring of 2000. The call
for the May 3 event announced:
 |
| Go see Blondie of Arabia. http://www.monicahunken.com/Home.html |
Join us after the show for a talk with Monica Hunken, Wendy Brawer (Founding Director of Green Map System), and Ben Shepard (author, professor and organizer with Time’s Up! and ACT UP), moderated by Keegan Stephan (organizer with Time’s Up!), to discuss bicycles as vehicles for social change. Talk is included with ticket purchase. You can also bring your ticket stub from a previous performance of Blondie for free entry.
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| Monica'ss post show panel with Keegan, Monica, Ben S, Wendy, Jen at a Bike Panel at the Culture Project photo by Josh Bisker |
Keegan started the event at 45 Bleeker. "I'm on stage with an incredibly effective group of activist, a professor and social worker, the founding director of an international system of map-making, a highly respected activist actress and educator, and an internationally acclaimed artist, photographer, and blogger," he explained. "Yet we're here to discuss bicycles - something most American's consider toys for children, or a mark of a revoked driver's license. Why do you guys see bikes as vehicles for social change?"
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| Cyclists and environmentalists have long collaborated. |
Listening to
Keegan, I reflected on my first experiences riding and becoming aware of public
spaces and what they teach us about the city. Much of
Hunkens' play, afterall, is about the specter of difference and how people
relate to this in public space. I saw
the street from an entirely new perspective when I first started riding bikes rides
through suburban Atlanta and Dallas in the 1970's. One could see the treasures among the ruins
of the streets, the vines winding out of the sidewalk, places where people smoked,
lots were left abondoned, and we helped transform neglected spaces into places
for bike adventures, races, and play. It
was also a place to see the ways bodies intersect, conflict and co exist in
urban space. Riding my bike through
these spaces offered a unique vantage point with which to consider the struggles over difference in public space,
including first encounters with police who pulled myself over with a friend,
who was Black, as we rode through the streets of Dallas. Here was the dark underbelly lurking beneath
most southern cities. Yet, what are
differences in the way we see people in public space.... a white blond women riding
her bike through in Saudi Arabia or an African American teenager riding with
friends and profiled by police in a Dallas suburb or a Black body dancing on
roller skates in Washington Square Park?
Riding is a way to see a few images of really going on in a city and
what we need to change. It is also a way
to imagine that we can change it. Over the years, taking part in Critical Mass
and Times Up! rides, I saw that riding is a way to engage in a dialogue with
this difference, It is a way to transform space, reshaping it from a route to work, a means of
necessity, into a space for imagination, connection and play.
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| View of rubble beneath the Brooklyn Bridge from the East Side Bike Path. |
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| Riding bikes is an experience in joy. |
With cyclists joining and supporting movements from socialism
to feminist, post 1960' s anarchism, environmentalism, and public space
activism - this practice is really about
bodies in space and the ways they impact the streets and public spaces of our
cities. It is about a clash of ideas and
sensibilities. Cyclists took part on
bike blocks defending gardens, scouting and doing comm for movements from
global justice to Occupy.
 |
| The map for the May 12 action anticipating Occupy. The bike bloc helped coordinate the communications. |
May 12, 2011, cyclists helped coordinate communication for arally downtown with labor, environmental, and health movements joining downtownand marking the beginning workings of Occupy.
I
was pulled into the organizing by a group of AIDS activists from Health Gap and
ACT UP who called to ask if Times UP!, the group I work with, could coordinate a
roving bike-block/communications team to report on the conditions of the labyrinthine
streets of Lower Manhattan, as we had done during the convergence actions of
global justice movement’s peak years and continue to do the last Friday of
every month during Critical Mass. While teachers marching downtown from City
Hall had a permit, the same was not true of the other groups who intended to
converge on Wall Street to push the bankers to pay their fair share. Using
walkie-talkies and a text message loop, we hoped to help everyone know which
streets were blocked off and which tributaries remained open.
 |
| lovelane_joannsantangelo |
Cyclists were
celebrated by the Situationists as a means of challenging automization of
cities, colonized by the privatizing means of cars. Cyclists offered a means to remap the city. The
Situationist response to the privatization of public space included a series of
guerilla activist tactics, including interventions termed "detourne" and
"derive". “Detourne” refers to the rearrangement of popular signs to create new meanings, while
"derive" involves walking tours throughout the city. Through these gestures we create new maps
for urban living.
The Situationists inspired countless groups including the Provos, who helped imagine and create the DIY bike infrastructure, as well building occupations which would shape Amsterdam. Our free play as well as bike program owes a great deal to the Provos. "If the very scale of New Babylon’s ambition ruled out its realisation, the vision of a city devoted to play directly inspired later movements like the “Provos” of Amsterdam, who set out to revolutionise the city on a more modest level, with free bikes and the occupation of abandoned buildings."
Bike activists specifically look to the
theatrics of the Provo Provo
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| The Situationists: Guy Debord, Michèle Bernstein and Asger Jorn |
The Situationists inspired countless groups including the Provos, who helped imagine and create the DIY bike infrastructure, as well building occupations which would shape Amsterdam. Our free play as well as bike program owes a great deal to the Provos. "If the very scale of New Babylon’s ambition ruled out its realisation, the vision of a city devoted to play directly inspired later movements like the “Provos” of Amsterdam, who set out to revolutionise the city on a more modest level, with free bikes and the occupation of abandoned buildings."
 |
| http://styleanderror.co.uk/2010/10/boris-bike-free-love/provos-white-bicycle-plan_which-will-be-re-enacted-by-nva_low/ New York owes a great deal to these anarchist inspired bike activists. |
On the panel, Wendy
pointed out that when the war began against Iraq, cyclists placed signs on
their bikes declaring: "Bicycling: a quiet statement against oil wars."
In this way, cycling supported efforts to limit the environmental and political
damages of fossil fuels. Through cycling
we help fashion a different kind of
sustainable urbanism born of non-polluting transportation.
Jean Hillary,
who was in Paris when bike share began, suggested that such cyclists changes
cities, particularly with programs such as bike share which infuse the streets
with thousands of cyclists, slowing traffic, demanding safety and security and
support. Cycles also help us retrace our
engagement with city, expanding a conversation about urban living,
transportation, labor, and safety.
Through it, we put our bodies on the line, acknowledge others, trusting
them to acknowledge us, hopefully without fear of negating themselves. Yet, this is sometimes hard.
Along the way, we
help engage within a dialogue with difference, as Hunken's play reminds
us. It happens every time we chat, with
other cyclists, pedestrians, drivers, and others in the streets. In this way it is a space for conversation,
as well as a means to break down barriers.
As a model for imagining a new way of living with a rapidly warming,
increasingly congested world, cycling is a precursor to changes in urban space,
several panelists concluded.
"Its really about public space," Keegan noted.
"Its really about public space," Keegan noted.
"There is so much more we could have discussed!"
Monica noted after the show. "Generator bikes at Liberty square and
recovery work after Sandy and on and on, each of you individual fascinating
projects and lives. I want to hear more!"
The human power of bikes, of energy bikes, are many noted
Brennan later in the weekend.
Finishing the talk, we walked over to Noho Star and hung out
into the night, but not too late. The next
day's adventures would be many.
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| The theme of public space would churn throughout the weekend. |
Battling the Pipeline
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| Cowboys warming of a train ahead. Photo credit: The Imaginative Beauty of New York's High Line |
Saturday, I woke up early, grabbed my cowboy hat, put on my
boots and rode up to the West Village to play a cowboy in an environmental
walking tour organized by Occupy the Pipeline dubbed: The Secrets of Death
Avenue in Manhattan. The
organizers for the event noted:
Change
is essential to life, and the West Village has been an incubator for change. A
vibrant blend of immigrants, artists, lefties, financiers, gay and straight,
young and old, affluent and hardscrabble, this area has been one of the world's
most fertile spawning grounds of creativity, social change, and protest. Through
conventional exposition, street theater and song — your participation is
welcome! — you will learn about how the clash of commerce with humanity once
earned a West Village street the name "Death Avenue". Now an unseen
danger lurks beneath that same street. What would Jane Jacobs do? What can you
do? Join us and find out.
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| Photo and caption by Erik M. The Secrets of Death Avenue Walking Tour - Day 1 - Death Avenue Cowboy © Erik Mc Gregor — with Benjamin Heim Shepard at FREE The Secrets of Death Avenue Walking Tour. |
Meeting the organizers
at the Pain Quotidien kiosk located at the southern end of the small, triangular plaza
just north of 14th Street at 9th Avenue, Manhattan, I noticed my cowboy hat, a
hat an old college buddy Kelly Foote had warn decades prior on trips from
Austin to Prague and Dublin, San Francisco to Chicago - it was gone, to the
universe. You can't carry too much,
can't handle or hold too many memories, I concluded. And we
headed out.
I joined the other
cowboys on bikes down on Gansevoort Street just south. When the umbrella went down, we joined the
tour, circling around the group, re enacting the warnings cowboys used to bring
to about the dangers of trains and construction. " By state law, for safety,
each train had to be preceded by a man on horseback holding a warning flag or
lantern and popularly known as a “Tenth Avenue Cowboy.” Yet, instead of trains we were warning
everyone about the danger of the Spectra Pipeline.
 |
| Scenes from Death Avenue Walking Tour. Caption from FREE The Secrets of Death Avenue Walking Tour:
Theatrical walking tour by your favorite fractivists!
Did you know 10th Avenue used to be called "Death Avenue"? Did you know cowboys once rode through the west village by horseback to protect the citizens? Did you know carcasses hung right over the sidewalk leading to Death Avenue? Did you know one female activist named Jane Jacobs "duked it out" with the city and protected our beloved city from being turned into a giant highway? ... Did you know underneath the new Whitney Museum of American Art, there lies the beginning of a fracked gas pipeline? And do you know what YOU can do to change the future of our city to create renewable energy for now and help shut down the fracked gas coming to all 5 boroghs? Join this fun, interactive walking tour. We are hoping to reach an audience that doesn't respond to marches or flyering by offering a super fun way to learn about the history and mystery of West Village around the MeatPacking District. Come one, come all. Invite your moms and dads, friends that may not be engaged with the fracking issue yet, work colleagues etc. We promise good, clean fun! 9am on May 4th and then to repeat at 3pm on May 5th |
Throughout the tour,
we meandered through the changing streets of the West Village looking at the
histories of struggle, arts, clashes of culture, the intersections between meat
packing and leather, labor and public sex, prostitutes and frat boys, trannies
of flaneurs, sex workers and voyeurs, leathermen and financial speculators, harm
reductionists and drinkers, Italian fashionists and artists, act uppers and socialists,
public space advocates and car loving developers, lusty shoppers and preppies -
all o f whom have at one point or another made their way through the
neighborhood, leaving their mark.
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| Moses and Jacobs duking it out. Photos by Erik McGregor |
As we walked to the
highline, Robert Moses greeted us from above.
Monica was there in boxing gloves to channel Jane Jacobs to beat back
Robert Moses.
She led the tour for a
bit.
We met Barbara Streisand
singing ''Don't Reign on
My Parade," artists, and storytellers of the neighborhood's past while
remembering where the city has been and what the city would become after the
looming the Spectra Pipeline. Standing beneath
the hotel at the Highline, Monica noted people looked to the health of the city,
their friends, and neighborhoods to fight Robert Moses' plans to put up a super
highway across the village. They didn't
just live in towering hotels and towers, ignoring what went on beneath them. Instead of turning away from what was happening beneath the
streets of their city, artists and regular New Yorkers looked at what the city
was doing to itself and fought back. Hunken's
point, of course, was that we can do the same, even if it is not easy to fight
back developers.
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| The Spectra Pipeline itself and the fossil fuel fools promoting it. |
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| Bottom photo and caption by Erik M from The Secrets of Death Avenue Walking Tour - Day 1 - Robert Moses © Erik Mc Gregor — with Joseph Jonah Therrien at FREE The Secrets of Death Avenue Walking Tour. |
Finishing the tour, we
ended at the Playground pier
on the Hudson, opposite Jane Street, where Kim talked about the health risks of
the pipeline. There are alternatives,
she reminded us - wind, solar, etc. which we can all embrace as part of an ever
expanding model of sustainable urbanism.
As the walking tour
ended, I thanked Kim and Monica and Morgan for their amazing work, suggesting
Monica channel Jacobs' life story for her next one person show. But that's another story for another day. Some of the gang went for more rehearsal or
for margaritas.
Hoola Hoop for the POPS
Leaving, I rode down
past Christopher Street, past an old adult bookstore where I used to organize
sat vacant. Turned left and rode to ABC
No Rio in the Lower East Side. There, Judy helped me pull out the Times UP!
sound bike. Brennan helped us hook up the
battery. And off we rode to Exchange
Place and New Street for the action.
Judy
meandered down, from the Lower East Side, trying to follow an out of date
google map, from the East to the West side of the labyrinthian streets of Lower
Manhattan. We could not just ride due West, we had to zig
zag up and down Nassau, over to Broadway, down and around to Exchange Place
just down the street from Zuccotti.
Hoola
Hoop the POPS.
RECLAIM
Public Space.
Today,
cars are parked in this privately owned public space.
Tomorrow
it will be our commons.
Reclaim
this public space with stories, art, music, and hoola hoops.
Bring
your performances, food, art, and hope for a public commons for us all to share
and enjoy.
Public
space for the people.
May
4th come chill out off Broadway.
The itinerary
for the day was simple.
12-
Greetings
12-1:00
hooping/dancing
1:00-1:30
Hoop to Howl Stanza and hooping contest.
Who
can read the most stanzas of Allen Ginsberg's legendary poem while hooping?
1:30
-2:15 Poetry
2:30
OWS Puppetry Guild
3:00
physical story telling and games with Monica Hunken
3:30
POPS as a public commons Greg Smithsimon
but
all times and plans are tentative. you never know what happens in our agora
While the action
plan seemed simple enough, the action was anything but easy to organize. The energy of Occupy is elsewhere. Instead of working with wind in our sails, many
are coping with a changing landscape in which the revolution they envisioned
has not come to fruition. Still, the need
to fill public space remains; the need for authentic democracy born of simple
public gatherings remains.
Arriving at
Exchange place, we ran into friends. And
made our way to the lonely POPS.
I could barely
recognize it from our event in the fall. But I finally found the sign declaring
this was a public space. This slab of
pavement was supposed to have three trees and lined seating but none was to be
found.
Friends came and went.
 |
| Photos of our transformation of the POPS from a cold plaza into a place for play. Photos by Stacy Lanyon. |
But there was
enough room for hoola hooping and poetry.
And hoop we did, just like the kids did at Santa Monica Pier in Los
Angeles.
 |
| Mat Plendl at the Santa Monica Pier Side Show |
Some read poetry
while hooping.
Others recited
poems without hoops.
Others performed.
After all the
crazy worrying, it was turning out to be a fun day out there.
 |
| Jennifer and Babs brought the hoola hoops and got us started. Photo by Barbara Ross. |
Greg and Monica
showed up around 3 for more games and stories.
Smithsimon regaled with a short talk on the history of the hoola hoop
and the POPS. And a few of us chalked in
the space.
Greg suggested
we all move forward with other occupations of other POPS. Already security guards citywide know they
have to let us use these spaces unlike only a few years prior to Occupy. The lessons of Occupy are many. Its legacy lingers. And now we have a blueprint for other artful creative
occupations.
I finally
thanked everyone.
And a few of us
joined Greg for a walking tour of the POPS, check out 55 Water Street where one
has to navigate a sign prohibiting "rallying or demonstrations." This seems highly dubious on first amendment
grounds for a public space. Still the
sign remains, probably designed after Occupy.
Walking through the "the “elevated Acre” at 55 Water
Street Brooklyn over the water," Smithsimon noted a wedding was taking place, "a demonstration of love" he suggested the security seemed to think was fine. He suggested the new rules for the space seemed to be a direct response to Occupy. But were they legal? That was another question.
The signs in front of the POPS seem to be getting more and more restrictive post Occupy. Here is another at 8 Spruce Street.
The Frank Gehry building got some increased height and bulk out of the deal to create the POPS below. But are the rules too excessive or beyond the spirit of the zoning law?
After all, as Greg Smithsimon points out the regulations which govern most plaza signs prohibit multiple prohibitions. Chapter seven section notes:
Most of these signs violate these regulations. After all Greg points out Chapter seven, 37-752 notes “All #public plazas# shall be accessible to the public at all times, except where the City Planning Commission has authorized a nighttime closing, pursuant to the provisions of this Section.” Accessible at all times means accessible at all times.
From POPS to Gardens
 |
| Photos and caption by Barbara Ross Times Up is constantly on the look out for POPS to ensure the owners keep them in compliance. This beautiful public space has a sign "No Performances or Rallies." We need to research if this is legal. It certainly is not an artist-first amendment-friendly public space! |
The signs in front of the POPS seem to be getting more and more restrictive post Occupy. Here is another at 8 Spruce Street.
The Frank Gehry building got some increased height and bulk out of the deal to create the POPS below. But are the rules too excessive or beyond the spirit of the zoning law?
After all, as Greg Smithsimon points out the regulations which govern most plaza signs prohibit multiple prohibitions. Chapter seven section notes:
37-752
Most of these signs violate these regulations. After all Greg points out Chapter seven, 37-752 notes “All #public plazas# shall be accessible to the public at all times, except where the City Planning Commission has authorized a nighttime closing, pursuant to the provisions of this Section.” Accessible at all times means accessible at all times.
From POPS to Gardens
The blueprint
lays in the space between the sidewalk and the plaza, in the legacies of these practices of reclaiming public
spaces, including gardens, such as the Nothing New Garden, where we meandered
Sunday.
Even walking through the streets from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg to get to Nothing Yet, involved an experience a flaneur could love.
 |
| Legendary gardener Adam Purple has honored Nothing Yet Community Garden. |
The 596 Acres
folks met with Times Up! to talk about what we could do to help keep up our
good work. And the movement to reclaim
vacant lots and public spaces for and imagination, stories and bike rides
continued for another weekend.
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