Around 2 a.m., a man driving a station wagon crashed through the front gate of Tompkins Square Park on Avenue A and St. Mark's Place, according to witnesses. The man had been driving east on St. Mark's Place ... without apparently realizing that this portion of the street ends at the Park entrance...
The driver then tried to leave the scene.
"About 25 people gathered around and screamed at him as he reversed away," said Greg Nardello, proprietor of The Village Joker on St. Mark's Place. "I am assuming he did not get very far since his wheels appeared to be flat, and a cop was chasing him northbound on Avenue A."
I hope he got away. I hate those gates. They are a constant reminder that the park is not the 24 hour community gathering spot that it used to be. Now it is empty and deserted at night and no one hangs out there. Back in the good old days those 25 people would have been cheering him and helping him get away. Screw the police state and rats.
ReplyDeleteany word on the NEW MO'SAIC'S AT " STMARKS AND A.....ANENUE A '...DID THEY SURVIVE FULL STORY AT ........MOSAICMANNYC.......JOIMS BLOG....AKA OFFICIALEASTVILLAGENEWS.SINCE 1998..............HELP SAVE THE TTOURS START HIGH NOON AT ASTOR PLACERAIL....FUCK THE GATES AT THE PARK HELP SAVE THE MOSAIC TRAIL AND DONATE AND PROVE IT.!.
ReplyDeleteProbably some anarchist reliving his glory days.
ReplyDeleteJohn Penley: you've got to be f****** kidding me! Someone absentmindedly drove onto a busy sidewalk with a car, aka a machine that kills pedestrians in NYC, and you applaud this?! Thank heavens he appears not to have hurt anyone. Did you somehow miss the horrific accident on 4th and 2nd Ave last week, and many other instances of pedestrians getting killed by reckless drivers? I wonder how you'd feel if you or someone you care about had been walking past that date.
ReplyDeleteI also disapprove of locking public parks. But cheering for an asshole who could have seriously hurt or killed innocent people is ludicrous.
Really, these car drivers are out of control.
ReplyDeleteCitiBike is obviously to blame for this. How many gates must die for Janette Genghis Kahn's tyrannical transportation final solution?
ReplyDeleteAgreed, 11:10!
ReplyDeleteThis used to constantly happen at Lexington Ave at Irving place. Time to install those blinking yellow lights on the fence. Since they went up on the fence at Gramercy Park, a car hasn't crashed into it.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, cars still continue to crash into Gramercy Park's gates at night in spite of the blinking lights, they just don't do it as often. It got so bad for awhile that the 13th Precinct had to park a big white police van there to keep cars from wrecking the wrought iron fences, which cost a fortune to replace.
ReplyDeleteThe only solution is to put nice big racks of CitiBikes at the entrances to Tompkins Sq., since they are an amazingly strong barricade and is the one thing in the universe that is completely impenetrable.
While I have no love for 99% of the people on the street at 2 am these days, nor for the gates on the park, I also have No Love for most of the drivers in this neighborhood, especially those driving after the bars start closing, as there's an amazing number of apparent drunk drivers. I wonder if these recent accidents will change the practices of the 9th Precinct w.r.t. DWI checkpoints.
ReplyDelete"patriots to the camps"? Sheesh!
ReplyDelete