Trashing The East Village

Seen in the East Village on an early Sunday morning, trash cans throughout the neighborhood were knocked over, spilling their contents about the sidewalk and street. A stellar member of the community no doubt, just having some fun on a drunken walk home.

Fresh Kills Park Update: Billboards from Skynet!

Fresk Kills Digger gets a new life as a billboard, image courtesy of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
NYC The Blog went to a symposium on parks last week sponsored by the Municipal Art Society. While there NYCTB Twittered little snippets of interesting information. Such as learning that the city earns 12 million dollars a year selling the methane gas from Freshkills to Con Edison. Or hearing the Bronx River is New York City's only fresh water river, that volunteers took ten thousand tires off site during cleanup of Concrete Plant Park, or learning that Peter "Rail Trails" Harnik, Director of Trust for Public Land, doesn't mince words when it comes to Tampa, Florida. "Tampa," Peter said dryly, is "not a very innovative place".

NYCTB found the most interesting piece of information gleaned that night was spoken by Eloise Hirsh, administrator for Freshkills Park, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. During her slideshow, (video highlights here) Eloise explained that the Department of Sanitation gave the park a digger, which is a huge machine they used to take the garbage from the barges and place it on the top of the trash mountain. Freshkills Park is going to use the Digger as a billboard. "I don't like to say the word billboard at the Municipal Arts Society, " she confided to the attendees. "So it's just gonna be a really large identification sign."

To the right, another photo included in Eloise's slideshow. An image showing that Fresh Kills Park, if placed in Manhattan, would run from the southern tip of Manhattan to 26th St. Not included in the video online was the slideshow on 100 organizations holding the most influence over Fresh Kills future. Along with the majority of city, state, and federal gov't and non-profit orgs, the Staten Island Advance was listed in the "influential player" category.

Relatedly, Thirteen NY has just posted a video on Fresh Kills for their City Concealed series.