This year's Summer Streets is coming up the first three Saturdays of August (the 4th, 11th and 18th).
As in previous years, the car-free, Street-Festival-Free zone includes Lafayette, Astor Place and Fourth Avenue.
The city yesterday announced the activities taking place along the route. Here's some of what you'll find on Astor Place, via the Summer Streets website:
BF Bouldering Wall & Obstacle Course, Astor Place between Broadway and Lafayette Street
Join the Brooklyn Boulders Foundation to test your skills on an eight foot tall bouldering wall. Leave the ropes and harnesses behind and scale this wall with ease. The Bouldering Wall and Obstacle Course by the Brooklyn Boulders Foundation was co-designed by West coast-based Vertical Solutions featuring wood paneling, and a pull-up bar feature. The obstacle course includes accessible features for all abilities to be able to complete the course. Challenge yourself and get through quickly for a prize or race against a friend. Even if this is your first time, don’t worry, there will be plenty of safety mats to catch your fall.
And!
Gazillion Bubble Show’s Bubble Garden, 4th Avenue between 8th Street and 9th Street
GAZILLION BUBBLE SHOW is Unlike Anything You Have Ever Seen Before! The most incredibubble show in the world! Bubble lovers of all ages are delighted with an unbubblievable experience, awashed with a bubble tide, and perhaps even find themselves inside a bubble. Mind-blowing bubble magic, spectacular laser lighting effects and momentary soapy masterpieces will make you smile, laugh, and feel like a kid again. You have to experience it to bubblieve it! Experience the Gazillion Bubble show's exclusive interactive Bubble Garden. Join the fun by making bubbles of all sizes and learning new bubble tricks that will amaze and dazzle you!
"Mind-blowing bubble magic, spectacular laser lighting effects and momentary soapy masterpieces."
ReplyDeleteWill the magic mushrooms be provided?
The infantilization/kidultification of NYC marches on.
ReplyDeleteThis is stupid. The "meat and potatoes" if you will, of Summer Streets, is the streets. For biking, running, walking. All these little brainless side activities are like, sprigs of parsley, at best.
ReplyDeleteIf they really want to make people happy, they'd give us more of the meat and potatoes. Use all these resources to open more of Park Ave, make a longer route. That way, you'd enable people to have a genuine tour of the city. As it is, on bike at least, the whole route feels short of a real outing. It's over before you know it.
I go to this thing every year and while I've never actually stopped to partake in any of the side events, to me they look extremely marginal. I.e. nobody's clamoring for any of this crap, and nobody's really having any significant fun at them. The cynic in me feels that their only real purpose is to provide instagrammable moments and images to use for publicizing future Summer Streets. Look! People havin fun!
Summer Streets is one of the best events of the year, and the side events are a nice addition, providing much more value and entertainment than most street fairs with lots of free sample giveaways. The annual water slide by the courthouses is great fun, kids love it, along with the outdoor dance party, hammocks and free coconut water. Along the way they give away free bike helmets, do free bike repairs, give away water bottles and plenty of food samples. I agree it should be expanded to more uptown streets, but you can ride it back and forth and get in a nice 10 mile ride, then do loops around Central Park a;; day with the spandex ballet of that’s not enough. These are the few days that cyclists can really enjoy the streets, glad to see itls still going strong.
ReplyDeleteI love Summer Streets, too. I'm a pedestrian--as opposed to a runner or cyclist--and I enjoy both the car-free walk and the little breaks for the activity areas and info booths. Start early in the morning before it gets too hot! (And if there's an activity that you think is infantile/stupid/not for you, just walk on by . . .)
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