Are patrons of Bay Ridge's Third Avenue bar scene mature enough to handle a plan to create an eight-block pedestrian mall featuring string quartets and "doo-wop singers" this summer? The Brooklyn Paper profiles the debate at a Community Board 10 meeting over whether or not to block off eight blocks of Third Avenue for four weeks this summer for a proposed "Summer Stroll." “Every Friday and Saturday we have to clean up broken glass and vomit,” neighbor Lenny Variano said. “It’s disgusting." It can't be as disgusting as that other famed Bay Ridge event, Naked Old Lady Day. more ›

Last night, "Rock Center with Brian Williams" dipped its toe into the topic of New York City transportation: specifically, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Overall the piece is a fair one, and gives Sadik-Khan plenty of room to answer her critics and lay out her vision for a safer, cleaner, more efficient city. But Brian Williams, who is supposed to be the network's "young," affable anchor, turns into NBC's Steve Cuozzo. Williams tells reporter Harry Smith that he's "drunk the Kool-Aid" when Smith lauds the DOT's efforts, and calls Sadik-Khan "a very powerful woman with an exotic name." Haha, it's mass suicide to support bike lanes! And isn't "Ronald Reagan" exotic compared to "Brian Williams?" more ›

Normally when we spill ink on one of Steve Cuozzo's adorable columns in the NY Post, it's to point out that he is the Mayor of Wrongville, a loner afraid of change who sits in the corner of his hovel surrounded by jars of urine, rocking back and forth on his heels whilst murmuring things about "pedestrian plazas." Maybe not! Today, Cuozzo is the champion of service employees everywhere in advocating for a mandatory, built-in 20 percent tip in New York establishments. "A mandatory service charge democratizes the restaurant experience for both customers and staff," Cuozzo writes. more ›

Call it a Crisis on Ninth Ave: concrete "boobs" litter the six dumb pedestrian plazas around the avenue. Who will speak for the trendy businesses of the Meatpacking District? The Lorax can't, because he didn't make the dress code. So leave it to America's Paper the NY Post and the Meatpacking District Improvement Association to shine some light on the atrocities. "They just sit out there and do nothing," the owner of the Gaslight Lounge tells the paper, presumably unaware of their awesomely essential evolutionary purpose. more ›

Remember this guy? He's the Council member who made headlines with his idea to make cyclists get licenses. (At the time, he told us, "The people on bicycles brought this on themselves by behaving this way.") Our favorite young Republican, Eric Ulrich, is back with more insights into the city's transportation system. This time his ire aimed at the DOT for planning more pedestrian plazas, which Ulrich says shouldn't be built until every street in NYC (or at least his district in Queens) is in mint condition. more ›

Bill Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg's joint press conference yesterday on the merger of their respective climate groups also gave Bubba the chance to wax a little nostalgic about the Times Square of old. Of course, his point was that Times Square has improved since Giuliani Disneyfied it and Bloomberg turned it into a pedestrian mall, but his description of his visit to Times Square in the '60s is so noir and hard boiled that you can't help but hear a note of wistfulness in his recollection: more ›

Breathe in that fresh...Times Square air? According to the most recent New York City Community Air Survey (below), those Times Square pedestrian plazas are doing their job. The report shows, "After the conversion to a pedestrian plaza, NO pollution levels in Times Square went down by 63 percent while, NO2 levels went down by 41 percent." Just maybe don't hang out in all those places around the pedestrian plazas...where the diverted cars are. more ›

It's been a tough few years for cantankerous NY Post columnist Steve "He Who Yells At Cloud" Cuozzo. So many changes in this town! Particularly near his office, where the DOT turned several blocks of Broadway into pedestrian plazas that Cuozzo did NOT sign off on. Infernal bike lanes have popped up everywhere, cigarette smoking is criminalized, and now the DOT is still threatening big changes to 34th Street. In a new rant entitled "Debacle on 34th St.; DOT's plans to ruin grand blvd," Cuozzo draws a line in the sand: more ›

At Wednesday's press conference to announce an expansion of the city's smoking ban to parks, beaches, boardwalks, pedestrian plazas and dreams, officials explained that it would be up to the Parks police and concerned citizens to enforce the law. City Councilwoman Gail Brewer told reporters, "I’m looking for Gale Brewer, citizen, to be able to say to the other citizen: 'Excuse me, sir, but that’s illegal. You really can’t smoke here.' " But how will New York's smokers react to such scolding from the fresh air freaks? Judging by a social experiment conducted by some Times reporters, not very submissively. more ›

Realizing the worst fears of cantankerous Post columnists Steve Cuozzo and Andrea Peyser, the DOT seems to be moving toward a completely car-free stretch of Broadway in midtown. Pedestrians, cyclists, and many merchants have praised NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan for her ambitious reboot of Broadway, which has already banned motor vehicles from seven blocks of Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square, and replaced car lanes with bike lanes all the way down to Union Square. Now come hints that Sadik-Khan's Master Plan may be to banish motorists from Broadway throughout midtown. more ›

Back in May, the DOT announced that Brooklyn-based artist Molly Dilworth won a commission to paint the pedestrian plazas on Broadway from 47th to 42nd Streets. And then we forgot all about it. Today Valerio Bruscianelli reminds us, with a photo showing the work halfway complete. Called "Cool Water, Hot Island," the piece is composed of a graphical representation of NASA's infrared satellite data of Manhattan. more ›

In the past week, the DOT has revealed details about two bold new plans to create pedestrian plazas in high-traffic parts of Manhattan. As part of a proposed 34th Street Transitway, a pedestrian plaza would be created on the block between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas. Further downtown, the DOT wants to turn a block of Broadway north of Union Square into another pedestrian plaza, which would extend along East 17th Street to the eastern corner of the park, at Park Avenue South. But the two proposed changes have come at a price: the fragile inner serenity of NY Post columnist Steve Cuozzo. more ›

The primary, official purpose of the Broadway Pedestrian Plazas—which last May banned cars from seven blocks along Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square—was to relieve traffic congestion, because Broadway disrupts traffic where it intersects with other streets. (As part of the changes, Seventh Avenue was widened from three to four lanes at 45th Street.) But the dramatic transformation, which received razzing from some and raves from others, was always intended as a temporary pilot program, pending a DOT study on the traffic impact. It's now being reported that the study was completed a month ago, and the results are not what Mayor Bloomberg and the DOT had hoped. more ›

Polllsters at Quinnipiac checked in with New Yorkers on some quality of life issues that have been in the news lately. A couple months into the Broadway pedestrian mall experiment, city residents are still supportive of the mayor's initiative—though they like it best from a distance. The mayor seems to generally be in good shape on the issues asked about—New Yorkers stood behind him on control of the schools as well. The city's real enemy, not surprisingly, is the MTA. Here are some of the results from the poll taken last week: more ›

The gangs of tourists roaming around from one set of patio furniture to the next in our new extra pedestrian-friendly Gotham are not only getting to enjoy some R&R for free, they're also getting to take in interactive displays informing them what the latest cable offerings are without the nuisance of clicking on a TV or flipping through a magazine. That's because we're now learning that the city has been quietly been pocketing money from advertisers and other private groups wanting to set up camp in the new pedestrian plazas. Officials have yet to deny one permit for companies who want to stage events in the plazas for fees as high as $38,500 that go into the city's general fund. No one would comment on whether the revenue potential was a factor in its plan for a car-free Broadway, but a spokesman did emphasize that unclogging traffic was its motivation. The Project for Public Spaces sounds generally supportive of the extra attraction that the paid events bring to the plazas, but one person lounging got demanding with who gets them, saying, “Would I have Mariah Carey here performing? Probably not.” more ›