Upper Green Side

Promoting Greenmarkets

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Some more lovely photos of Sunday’s 92nd Street Greenmarket Celebration, from Council Member Dan Garodnick’s office. At left, Garodnick and the Mayor get ready to cut the ribbon on the Greenmarket. Below, shoppers enjoy the fresh produce.

Help us promote the new 92nd Street and 82nd Street Greenmarkets. Print and distribute this poster [PDF] to let your fellow Upper East Siders know about the new markets. Remember not to post on street poles — that’s illegal. Good places: dry cleaners, laundromats, cafes, doorman buildings (just give it to the doorman, they’ll post it), etc.

And if you’re free on July 8th or July 9th, we’d love to have your help four an hour or two those opening days to flyer around the markets to help draw people to them. Contact or join us to help out.

CitySol: Showcasing Sustainability

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This Sunday, July 2nd, from 1pm to 8pm, sees the first in this summer’s monthly music and markets series, CitySol, hosted by Solar One, the green energy, arts and education center at Stuyvesant Cove Park:

Citysol celebrates the idea that greening New York is about unleashing, not taming, the city and its energy. Each free all-day event includes: renewable energy-powered live music featuring emerging NYC acts, interactive exhibits showcasing key innovations, practices and policies for New York’s sustainable future, and a green lifestyle marketplace offering apparel, electronics, household goods, media and much more.

Stuyvesant Cove Park, off FDR Drive at 22nd and 23rd Streets, is maintained by Solar One under a long-term lease with the city, and has been designated as a Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. They use sustainable maintenance practices, run a variety of community events, and are building a full-scale environmental learning center.

What Real Bike Lanes Look Like

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In the constant debate over cycling safety and illegal cycling people often seem to overlook a central fact - NYC residents and the government officials in charge of transportation don’t know what real bike lanes should look like. Streetsblog has some nice photos of what REAL bike lanes look like.

Here on the Upper East Side we have a solidary bike lane that starts (out of nowhere) at 72nd Street and First Avenue and goes up past 96th Street all the way to 125th Street. There are no south-bound bike lanes, no crosstown bike lanes and a pitiful excuse for an East River greenway that is interupted at various points by a large staircase, Carl Schurz Park promenade and completely non-existent from 62nd 36th Streets. But even that solitary bike lane on First Avenue is pretty lame - a thin white stripe that is often violated by cars & trucks.

But in many other cities around the world, bike lanes are physically separated from the roadway servicing automobiles.

These bike lanes can be used by anyone - even the elderly and children. To avoid horrible tragedies like the recent death of Derek Lake the City Department of Transportation local Community Boards and local elected officials need to come together to build an agenda of mutual benefit for cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.

Transportation Alternatives is having a Press Conference on the Steps of City Hall Thursday Morning, June 29th, at 9am to address this issue and then a memorial ride at 6:30pm later that day at 42nd Street & the Hudson River Greenway.

Mayor Celebrates 92nd St Greenmarket

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On this drizzly but beautiful morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Council Member Dan Garodnick visited the Holmes Towers Isaacs Center at 92nd St. and 1st Ave. to celebrate the opening of the new weekly Greenmarket, which will officially open Sunday, July 9th, bringing fresh, local food to the neighborhood every Sunday through November.

“Kermit the Frog said it’s not easy being green,” said the Mayor, “but he was wrong. It is easy being green.” The Mayor touted the fresh food the Greenmarket would bring to the neighborhood, and spoke of it helping with the city’s obesity problem. He also noted that people socialize more at farmer’s markets than at grocery stores, and that it would bring life to the community.

Council Member Garodnick spoke of the economic benefits the Greenmarket would bring to the area, and added that, in addition to health and revitalization, he hoped it would help knit the neighborhood into the larger whole of the Upper East Side.

Afterwords, people went out to enjoy a preview of the market. When it officially opens on July 9th, it will feature five farmers selling a variety of goods. Today, one farmer was there selling fresh apples, just-picked strawberries, sweet snap peas, apple cider and cider donuts, and a small selection of vegetables:

Upper Green Side is proud to have helped bring this Greenmarket to be, and thanks CENYC, Council Member Dan Garodnick, the people of Holmes/Isaacs, and the surrounding community for helping make this a reality. And I just have to say that the strawberries were utterly fantastic!

Greenmarkets Progress Continues

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UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg, Councilmember Dan Garodnick and other Local Elected Officials will participate in a ribbon cutting ceremony on June 25th at 10:30am at 92nd & First Ave. Please join us as we celebrate the arrival of local food greenmarkets in our neighborhood. The UES greenmarkets will actually open on the Weekend of July 8th and 9th — however, there will be farmers selling local food until 5 PM at this special celebration.

The CB8 Land Use Committee affirmed the Street Fairs Committee’s approval of the expansion of the Greenmarket at St. Stephen’s (82nd St. between 1st and York) and the establishment of a Greenmarket on 1st Ave between 92nd and 93rd on June 14th.

The interesting news, from City Council Member Dan Garodnick, who spoke in support of the 1st Ave/92nd St Greenmarket at the start of the meeting, is that Eli Zabar now supports the Greenmarket. We won’t ask what changed his mind, but applaud his support of this vital neighborhood improvement.

Rally Against Waste Transfer Station

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There will be a rally outside City Hall for local residents to express their point of view about the proposed 10 story Waste Transfer Station. This will be the last chance to influence Speaker Quinn before the City Council votes on the Mayor’s plan.

We at the Upper Green Side broadly support the idea of each neighborhood being responsible for it’s own waste and water based transportation of bulk waste as more energy efficient. But first we must stop the Department of Sanitation’s current paradigm of planning for more trash and siting waste transfer stations in heavily populated areas. We believe in stopping trash at it’s source and strongly support Consumer Union’s “Reaching for Zero” proposal, which recommends:

that the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg act immediately on the following priorities:

1. Pass the City Council Resolution #174 establishing a Zero Waste Goal for New York City.
2. Ensure that top level management in the City is committed to Zero Waste and to providing adequate funding for the necessary programs needed to reach our goals.
3. Ensure that key staff have adequate authority to be able to work across agencies and establish the necessary programs.
4. Require detailed Zero Waste Program Plans to be the major part of the 20 year Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan.
5. Think economic development, while investing in and developing zero waste programs.
6. Utilize all of the Pieces of Zero– waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting– to achieve zero waste (or close to it) in 2024.
7. Ensure that all the necessary support programs are in place- Economic Development, Education, Enforcement, Transportation, Legislation and Regulation, Research and Data-gathering and Financing.

Information below on the rally and how to get there. (Eco-Reco: Please use mass transit or bike)

Continue reading Rally Against Waste Transfer Station…

Letter To Editor Published In “Our Town”

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Dear Our Town Editor

Thank you for the breath of fresh air on cycling issues on the East Side. Too often people in the community simply want to express their frustration with a situation like illegal cycling or dangerous conditions on the road for cyclists, but stop short of the hard thinking and effort required to fight for practical solutions to those problems. I hope your editorial will stir a higher level of conversation on how to make cycling safer for everyone.

Those of us from the Upper Green Side (www.uppergreenside.org) believe that cycling is a form of environmentally friendly transportation that should be encouraged as much as possible and that protected bufferred bike lanes are a good first step. We hope to work with local elected officials, Community Board 8 and other local civic groups to craft as you say “an agenda of mutual benefit” for cyclists and non-cyclists.

Sincerely
Glenn McAnanama
Founder, Upper Green Side

UGS Victory: Two Greenmarkets Approved

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Victory for Local Food in the Upper East Side.

Two Greenmarkets were approved tonight by the Streetfairs Committee of Community Board 8 tonight with an overwhelming level of community support. This was made possible in large part because of the efforts of members of the Upper Green Side. We handed out flyers at key locations in the neighborhood. We gave out posters to all the major doorman buildings in the area. We worked with the offices of local elected officials city councilmembers Lappin and Garodnick. There were over 30 members of the local community in attendence, which is pretty good for a community board subcommittee meeting. And there was a near consensus of those in attendence in favor of the greenmarkets for all of the obvious reasons - better community interaction, direct contact with the farmers, access to affordable fresh food, helping struggling farmers, reducing the amount of fossil fuels used to transport the food from farm to market. Everyone, that is, except Eli Zabar.

Continue reading UGS Victory: Two Greenmarkets Approved…

Where and Why to Buy Local Grown Food.

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Many people have heard about organic foods that are grown free of chemical pesticides, industrial fertilizers that use heirloom seeds instead of monocultures in order to preserve the genetic diversity of the food we eat. But, just as important as buying organic, is buying local food -food produced within 200 miles of your home. Here on the Upper East Side you can buy 100% local food at the Yorkville/Carnegie Hill Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) groups and soon, depending on the meeting this June 8th at two neighborhood CENYC greenmarkets. To find other locations for CSAs, you can check out Just Food.

Below is a list of reasons why buying local food is important: Continue reading Where and Why to Buy Local Grown Food….

Letter to CB 8 on Cycling

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Dear M. Barry Schneider and Charles Warren and the CB8 Transportation Committee

I was very pleased to see that Community Board 8 included safer cycling routes in its District Needs Statement for Fiscal Year 2007 (http://cb8m.com/overview.cfm)

I would like to continue the discussion that we started in February about bringing safe buffered and protected bike lanes to the East Side. Working together with a small group of volunteers we have collected about 1000 signatures on a petition for north/south protected bike lanes to be installed on First and Second Avenues. Many of the people I spoke to in the neighborhood in the process of collecting these petitions believed that the bike lanes were a minimum standard of safety that should be provided to cyclists. I strongly believe that these bike lanes would not only provide safer routes for cyclists within and through our neighborhood, but could also help prevent many of the current illegal sidewalk riding that currently occurs. I also believe that it will serve to calm automobile traffic.

Continue reading Letter to CB 8 on Cycling…