The local paper for the Upper er East Side A LANDMARK HISTORY OF THE CITY <CITYARTS, P.10
BY MICKEY KRAMER
Around noon on a recent warm Tuesday, Linda Harris was on the sidewalk at 93rd Street about to cross First Avenue from its west side. That she had
A deliveryman on a bicycle riding southbound in the northbound First Avenue bile lane near 76th Street last week.
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SPRING (FINALLY) ARRIVES AT CARL SCHURZ NATURAL NEW YORK The East Side park preps for its annual spring sale BY MARY BARNETT
OurTownEastSide
O OURTOWNNY.COM @OurTownNYC
2015
THE WHITNEY AND THE MOLTING OF NEW YORK
the green light didn’t appear to matter to a bicyclist going north on the avenue’s bike lane. He sped through the red light. A startled Harris had to halt her 69-year old feet. “I’m just not sure these people know
The main entrance to Carl Schurz Park at East End Avenue and 86th Street. The promenade will be the backdrop to the plant sale on May 9. By then the avenue of cherry trees, shown leafing out here, will be in full bloom. Photo by Juanita Dugdale
30-6 Our Take
PEDESTRIANS LAMENT FIRST AVENUE BIKE LANE Residents say many bicyclists are cavalier about traffic laws
APRIL-MAY
After a winter that was like living inside an iceberg, New Yorkers are ready for landscapes of grass and flowers and leafing trees. And they can find them in city parks like Carl Schurz, where blossoms and trees are exploding with the spring. Against the park’s East River backdrop, visitors can see pink and white flowering apricot trees and clouds of forsythia, tulips, and daffodils. By Saturday of next week--May 9, the day of the park’s yearly plant sale--there will be blooms on the cherry trees, li-
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lacs, crab apples, and silver bells. The plant sale will have annuals that are hard to find, like cardoon, a bigleaved plant from the artichoke family, and some of the new varieties of coleus. Also for sale: unusual specimens of favorites like begonia and zinnia. The standard price is $5 apiece. The sale on May 9, the day before Mother’s Day, is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 86th Street and East End Avenue. Visitors to the sale who stroll
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PLANT SALE Saturday, May 9th 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Carl Schurz Park East End Ave. @ 86th Street
So far, the new Whitney Museum is a roaring success. Critics are swooning. Party planners are climbing over one another to reserve event spaces. Celebrities are tweeting out selfies of themselves. All of this has happened before the public has stepped foot into the place. That happens this weekend, and the new museum, a hulking space on the Hudson, will finally face its most important test. What the new Whitney has done, though, is make very clear a shift in the tectonic plates of power and prestige in the city. If you’re looking for where the money in New York in – and, by extension, the cultural cache that tends to follow it – you have to look downtown. And you need to focus that attention on Chelsea, whose remarkably swift ascendancy will only be sped up by the arrival of the Hudson Yards that are a 15-minute walk from the new museum. This is the way New York grows and stays vibrant. Neighborhoods and communities molt and shift, new ones rise as old ones settle down. The arrival of a new museum downtown – actually, the return of an old museum to its downtown roots – is as good as excuse as any to see those changes in action. Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday May 1– 7:34 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.
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