Thursday’s Headlines: Hanging Out on the Stoop Edition

Move over, brownstone and cement steps: There’s a new kind of stoop in town!

Those stoops aren’t attached to homes or apartment houses; instead, they’re colorfully adorned, stand-alone, metal-based street furniture designed by the Rockwell Group.

The Department of Transportation has installed two Rockwell-designed stoops (a full-sized one and a “mini”) between between 73rd and 74th streets on the 34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens — that being the open street’s future plaza block. Sporting space for planters and fanciful designs, the Rockwell stoops already are proving popular with the neighbors, as shown in the photos below and above.

But we’d be remiss if, in celebrating these new-fangled stoops, we didn’t pay homage to the old kind. So here’s a paean to the old-fashioned brownstone stoops of Bedford-Stuyvesant: Little Jackie’s “The Stoop.”

In other news:

• Our modest proposal: let’s beat all the swords into plowshares and melt all the guns into street furniture. (PBS)
• The Post’s Nolan Hicks bid transit reporters to “start your engines” on Gov. Hochul’s Tuesday-night congestion-pricing backpedaling. And we did!  (Streetsblog, NYPost, The City, Gothamist)
• Daily Newser Clayton Guse tweeted a helpful historical guide on claims that it “is not the right time” for congestion pricing: (Via Twitter)

• The DOT touted 100 current safety projects, especially around schools, implicitly responding to Streetsblog’s deep-dive investigation on the dangerous streets around our educational facilities.  (Streetsblog, NYDN, amNY)
• The MTA finally issued new maps and schedules on the long-delayed Bronx bus network redesign. (amNY)
• Dolan and Lieber are squaring off on the Penn Station reboot: Thus, we can expect more pay-outs to MSG. (Politico)
• Cops arrested the MTA bus driver who ran over a pedestrian on the Rock last month. (NYDN, Patch)
• Motorist-on-motorist violence shook Canarsie. (NYDN)
• Open Restaurant opponents are taking their protest to the streets again. (Village Sun)
• Where do you find criminals? Around cars, of course. (BKEagle)
• Stars — they’re just like us:

• “Beastie Boys Square”? Make some noise! (Gothamist)

• Finally, we kid you not: A DOT employee is hounding her Bronx neighbor because he fixes and stores bikes outside their building in a “parking” space. (Riverdale Press)