Yesterday we noted that the Highbridge Park path was unveiled after undergoing a $4.2 million makeover. The High Bridge, which the has been closed for around 30 years, will undergo a $60 million renovation and will reopen as a pedestrian bridge. The bridge connects Manhattan and the Bronx and is located at 174th and Amsterdam Ave in Highbridge Park in Manhattan and at West 170th, University Avenue & Highbridge in the Bronx. Besides the access......

The Brooklyn Paper reports that downtown Brooklyn is going to the dogs, with more and more canine-owning residents moving in, and little space provided for them to walk and play outdoors. Metrotech Commons, between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenue, was a canine hotspot, but the pups have recently been prohibited from the space. Metrotech Business Improvement Director Mike Weiss explained: “if the dog is doing his number on the lawn, it could be unsanitary. You......

The NY Times delved into the legalities of public drinking during this hot and hedonistic summer season. Is it illegal? Yes. But they do note that "in the summer of 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg suggested that drinking wine at concerts in Central Park was O.K. At Bryant Park on July 7, a security guard said he turned a blind eye to booze on movie nights, 'so long as it is covered, like in a......

Drinking in New York has long been reserved for private homes or establishments with liquor licenses (or speakeasys!), but how well is the law enforced when it comes to drinking on a stoop or in a public park? Apparently, and unfortunately, the law is still being upheld very well. A few years back the tabloids wondered why cops looked the other way when it came to Chardonnay swilling audiences listening to the symphony in Central......

Not-so-fun fact: According to the city’s DOT, it’s illegal to lock you bike to anything other than a bicycle rack. Thankfully, it’s not a law that seems to be enforced, but anyone who’s commuted by bicycle long enough will have the experience of finding the sign you locked your bike to removed so workers can tear up the sidewalk. The problem is that there are now approximately 131,000 cyclists in New York City and only......

Last night’s Coney Island Public Scoping Meeting was the place to be, as activists like political performance artist Reverend Billy turned the meeting into a carnival, leaping up on a chair with repeated cries of “Coney-lujah!” Musician Amos Wengler stood up to croon his anthem “Save Coney Island,” and Savitri D., the Mermaid Parade queen who had been on a hunger strike since Saturday to spotlight the meeting, passionately derided the city’s latest proposal for......

Photo via Brian Fountain's Flickr. The Bryant Park Summer Film Festival kicks off its 16th year tonight with the 1962 (Sean Connery era) Bond classic Dr. No, though it's likely the opening evening will get rained (and stormed) out. The Monday screenings will continue throughout the summer, however -- here's a look at the schedule:June 16th, Dr. No June 23rd, Bride of Frankenstein June 30th, Hud July 7th, The Man Who Came to Dinner......

A nosy Post reporter may have cost Coney Island “Mayor” Dick Zugin his free apartment in a building he purchased with a 3.6 million grant from the city. Zigun runs his Coney Island USA sideshow and museum out of the Surf Avenue building, which the city helped his group buy last year. But when confronted with documents that report the address as his residence, Zigun admitted that he’s also been illegally living there, albeit humbly......

When the Bloomberg administration successfully rezoned large parts of Williamsburg and Brooklyn three years ago to facilitate the construction of massive housing condos, the deal came with a promise to deliver lots of new park space. But while the luxury residential buildings are going up, the parks have remained a pipe dream. And local City Councilman David Yassky tells the Post he’s “sickened” that the Bloomberg administration has made “almost zero progress on the......

Over the weekend, hungry visitors to the Red Hook ball fields were disappointed to find that the famous Latin American food vendors were nowhere to be found. Back in March the Parks Department bent to considerable public outcry and dropped its threat to evict the longstanding vendors, instead granting them a six-year permit. But it seems the permit approval process – which requires equipment upgrades estimated to cost $15,000 to $30,000 – have delayed......

Just in time for summer, the Times has brought the fear to the park, where an army of infectious organisms await anyone reckless enough to let the grass touch their bare feet. According to a number of very uptight dermatologists, taking off your shoes in the park is pretty much akin to soaking them in a bucket of bacteria. Dermatologist Judith Hellman gave the paper ten good reasons why Richard Gere should have used a......

Barbecue fans will want to start bracing their colons for the 6th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which has been announced for June 7th and 8th in Madison Square Park. Gothamist tore through the festival of regional barbecue last year, devouring everything from pork shoulder to Brunswick stew to candied ribs. New York will be well represented this year by Hill Country, Rack and Soul, Blue Smoke, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que; other purveyors range......

Last month the city announced that the space dedicated to amusements in the latest Coney Island rezoning plan would be cut from 15 acres to 9 acres. City officials explained that the downsizing was necessary to accommodate “local landowners” – the biggest of those is developer Joe Sitt, whose glitzy plans were previously derailed by the city for the express purpose of devoting larger space for the amusement park. Now Sitt’s Thor Equities stands to......

Preliminary work could begin as soon as next month on the ambitious $500 million plan to transform Governors Island into a premiere destination for cyclists, nature lovers, large-scale music concerts and rock climbing. Last December a consortium of five design companies was chosen to turn the flat southern part of the island into an oasis with manmade hills and a shoreline promenade. Ultimately (say, 2013?) 90 acres of parkland will be remade for anyone willing......

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally......

The effect of a well-trafficked park under renovation really doesn't come into full relief until the spring, when the absence of greenery and flowers seems less like a normal part of urban living and more of a desecration of greenspace. The renovation of Washington Square Park continues at full tilt, however, as the fountain is reoriented centrally and the rest of the park is reordered to be greener and less anarchical. The Square used to......

After widespread outrage that the city Parks Department might end more than three decades of Latin American cuisine dished out during weekend soccer games in Red Hook, it was announced yesterday that the longtime vendors have been granted a six year permit. In the end, they were the only group to apply. Last summer the Department of Health cracked down on the vendors for health violations, and it was feared that the vendors would be......

Rendering of proposed Public Place development by The Hudson Companies. Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over......

Above, rendering of the proposed park; below, photograph of the site in its current state A $114 million plan to put a waterfront park on the East River, just south of the United Nations, came into focus yesterday; the four-acre site is where a parking lot for a Con Edison power plant used to reside. City Councilman Daniel Gardonick said, "The opportunity to create this riverfront park is an opportunity we cannot afford to......

Earlier this year some renderings for a Governors Island redesign were released. Out of the five contending designs, all of which the NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussof called "unambitious", a winner was finally chosen. Earlier today at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer announced the Dutch firm West 8 has been selected to recreate the open space on the island. This was one of the firms that Ouroussof pointed out......

The great-grandson of one of an early owner of Macy's is being accused by a 52-year-old jewelry designer of imprisoning the woman and torturing her with, of all things, a lobster trap. Bette Marchek claims that William Straus kept her captive on his Westchester estate, starved her, beat her, and eventually attacked her with a lobster trap while the pair were on City Island in the Bronx. That was the figurative straw that broke the......

The daughter of Daniel Malakov, the orthodontist who was killed on a playground by a gunman wielding a pistol with a homemade silencer, has been placed in foster care. The girl's physician mother and her family are suspects in the Queens-man's murder. Malakov was shot in front of his daughter in a Queens playground just six days after he'd gained legal custody of his daughter following a bitter custody dispute. A judge at the Queens......