Brooklyn

Brooklyn

For most New Yorkers the official end of summer is Labor Day which, this year, fell on Monday, September 4, 2006. For astronomers, pagans and Daniel Libeskind's "Wedge of Light," the end of summer is the Autumnal Equinox, the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator from north to south. By that measure, Fall begins on Saturday, September 23 at 12:03 am this year. But for those who commute by bike along the northern end of Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the end of summer will be the day that New York City's Department of Transportation creates bike safety improvements along this stretch of avenue recently identified as one of the city's top three bicyclist fatality areas. At the moment, there is no end in sight.

Yesterday was the Atlantic Antic, the annual, day-long festival along Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, in its 32nd year now. What a beautiful day. You'd be hard-pressed to find a place where as diverse a range of people and activities are brought together in such a natural and comfortable way:

Tuesday, September 12, Time?NYC College of Technology, 285 Jay Steet, Brooklyn.Community Forum on Atlantic Yards Project.

Here is a nice piece of correspondence from Streetsblog reader and Brooklyn Critical Mass rider Rich Krollman. If you have a photo or story that you'd like to see published on the blog, we really appreciate reader submissions. Send yours along by clicking "Eyes on the Street" in the upper left corner. We'll be improving our content submission functionality in the coming months, so keep an eye on that as well.

Overheard on Sunday afternoon in Carrol Gardens, Brooklyn where a boy of about  five years of age waited impatiently to cross the street with his mother:

A pedestrian crossing sign slants over the middle of Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, meant to remind drivers that human beings may try to cross the seven lanes of moving traffic on foot.  It is little comfort to the pedestrians standing exposed on the 2 foot wide median noticing that the sign was recently run into.

Recently, a bunch of us took a bike excursion along the East River waterfront from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to the new Water Taxi Beach in Hunters Point, Queens. Traffic was light most of the way and street life relatively heavy.

It isn't just in California where SUV's are secretly banned from certain roadways. Right here in New York City, many SUVs are banned from the Brooklyn Bridge, but nobody seems to know it.