Friday, May 28, 2021

Flashback Friday

The top photo is from September 2020... when the main lawn in Tompkins Square Park had grass... and as seen last evening...
Previously on EV Grieve:

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

WTF is going on over there? It is going to be nothing but dirt and mud when the rains come

Anonymous said...

When will the parks department step up and make it beautiful again? I really adore this area. It's so special. It doesn't seem to be an enormous priority as of now when the city is stretched thin in terms of time, labor and resources. Given the aesthetic state and overall lack of cleanliness, I wonder if it bothers those of whom that continue to lay bare on these barren patches of grass and dirt under the blazing sun as if it were the beach.

Choresh Wald said...

The park is overcrowded because we don’t have enough open space. The PS19 playground was heavily used when it was open, it is another failure of this city administration that all the school playgrounds (PS19, PS15, EVCS/CWS/P94) that were renovated by the Trust for Public Land with the condition that they will serve the whole community have been locked since February 2020. That’s why the push for the Avenue B Open Street is so important: when the 3 blocks next to the park will be transformed to a shared space people will have more space to breath (instead of just car storage: one car is parked there since January, another since April).

VillageNag said...

I have been contacting 311 about the Avenue A playground too - the sandbox area is a mess & new sand and cleanup haven’t happened in 4 years or more! This is a heavily used park & deserves to be cared for especially when we threatened with east river park closure.

Anonymous said...

The East River Park is about to be bulldozed, so we'll have that much less green space too for the next decade or so.

Anonymous said...

The whole park is being neglected from the Disgusting bathroom to the old worn out benches this park need funding to fix these problems

Anonymous said...

I am not sure what they can do about the main lawn. The issue is the number of people trampling on it every day. 10 years ago you would see maybe a two or three people sitting on the lawn at one time. Now the lawn is packed with people on a regular basis. With everyone trodding down the same route into and out of the main lawn, the grass will continue to get worn away.

Billsville said...

Tompkins Square Park has been in need of a serious cleanup for awhile, but nothing has been worse than Washington Sq .Park until this week, when the parks Dept. shut down the entire Northwest corner of WSP, which had turned into a drug den and homeless encampment. Then the park put up warning signage about what is permitted or not at the entrances, and finally started cracking down on the skateboarders who don't have a separate area like they do in TSP and rampage thorough-out the park.

Washington Sq Park also stopped the mobile DJs from blasting music, cleaned up the fountain which was full of trash floating in the water, and for the first time in a long time the park felt like its old self. It seems like the community board and Sixth Precinct is finally getting involved, and now there is a 10PM curfew over the next two weekends to stop the endless weekend parties.

The question for the EV is whether or not TSP needs the same kind of treatment, with curfews and park police for enforcement, and more cleanup crews, or do people just need to take better care of the park by acting responsibly for once? The destruction of East River Park will no doubt make things worse in the park for years to come, and the city should plan to do as much as possible to ensure TSP is taken much better care of than it has been until now.