We've long thought that if we wanted to have public sex in a NYC park, we'd have to settle for getting frisky behind a dumpster in Williamsburg (or, egads, taking a train out to Montauk). But all of our fears about ending up on Gothamist.com in some terribly awkward position after being arrested for a little public fornicating might be for naught, according to a report in the Post today.
The Post writes that cops have only given out 45 summonses for park sex this year, a 56 percent drop from the same period last year when cops ticketed 103 people. Things are even more loose in Central Park, where "cop-blocks...dwindled to just four in the first six months of the year, after 30 last year and 21 the year before."
So are people just having less sex in parks? Are the days of making whoopee all over lower Manhattan a relic of the past? Are cops just not bothering anymore? An NYPD spokesperson cryptically told the Post, "some conditions can be corrected without issuing a summons."
For what it's worth, the busiest area for getting busy seems to be Manhattan's 34th Precinct, which includes Inwood Hill Park, Fort Tryon Park and northern sections of Highbridge Park. At least seven hookups were interrupted there through June this year.
Thankfully, this NYPD ticketing abstinence has not extended to other sexual acts in public—grinding against fellow straphangers on the subway became a misdemeanor in the summertime, and the NYPD has become more responsive to such complaints.
We reached out to NYC Park Advocates director Geoffrey Croft to get his take on this coitus comedown. While there may be fewer people doing hanky panky in parks, there is certainly no shortage of websites offering tips on where to have public sex around the city. While the Post doesn't go that far, they do want you to know you can also get away with smoking weed outside now, so maybe there's a bunch of no-good hippies running wild in the house that Andrea Peyser built this weekend.
