Streetsblog San Francisco

San Francisco and New York were blessed with gorgeous weather Friday, which made for glorious PARK(ing) days in both cities.

In San Francisco, upwards of 34 metered parking spots were transformed into temporary parks, on-street bike parking demonstrations, cafe seating and other public space reimaginings. New York, writes Streetfilms director Clarence Eckerson, had about 50 spaces "filled to the gills with people, sod, chairs, food, fun, games, and in one case - bubbles galore!"

In his latest Streetfilm, John Hamilton, using images submitted to our Flickr pool, features some great San Francisco moments in SoMa, the Mission, and North Beach, and takes us for a brief photo tour of PARK(ing) Day events around the world. Clarence opted to "take it down a notch," and spent more time relaxing in the spaces rather than trying to document as many as possible. The result is two inspiring PARK(ing) Day Streetfilms!

When the first Park(ing) Day was launched by Rebar in 2005, right here in San Francisco, it was on the vanguard of street space reclamation. Four years later, it's undoubtedly part of a larger trend that includes such fine company as Sunday Streets, Pavement to Parks plazas, and the first steps towards a car-less Market Street. Park(ing) Day is now officially an international phenomenon, but its rapid growth could be seen just as easily by touring sites across the city today.

From bike parking to outdoor café seating to volunteer recruitment, Park(ing) Day spots were used for an impressive array of purposes today, some planned well in advance, others conceived of just this morning.

Fabrizio Laudati, who owns Pantarei Restaurant in North Beach, saw neighboring Caffe Greco setting up al fresco seating in the parking spot out front, and quickly claimed several parking spaces of his own for customer seating. The result was impressively elegant, all things considered, but Laudati said it would be even better if it were permanent.

"If it wasn't temporary, we could make it even prettier," said Laudati, who didn't flinch at the loss of a few parking spots. "Losing three spots is worth it since you have space for so many more customers to sit."

Read more...

Tomorrow's (PARK)ing Day festivities in San Francisco are likely to be much grander than in years past, with dozens of locations mapped out across the city as spots where metered parking spaces will be transformed into temporary public parks, and other uses, for people, instead of automobiles. Temporary parks are also being planned in locations all over the Bay Area.

A majority of spots in the city will be set up along the Valencia Street corridor and Civic Center. The SFBC plans a demonstration of on-street bicycle parking in front of Four Barrel Coffee and Bi-Rite Market while in North Beach the Great Streets Project will showcase "the future of what an official 'flexible parking space' will look like" in front of Caffe Roma and Caffe Greco.

Although 34 San Francisco locations are highlighted on the official PARK(ing) map, there are probably a lot of other locations that haven't been reported. Unlike cities such as New York and Santa Monica, San Francisco does not require a permit, which allows it to be "a little looser," said Matthew Passmore of Rebar. "The overall climate is pretty permissive."

So what are your plans tomorrow? Let us know! And please add your photos to our Flickr feed.

 

I was pretty sure that New York City had San Francisco beat for this year's Park(ing) Day, what, with the children's reading hour and the on-street gymnasium in Brooklyn; Staten Island and Queens getting in on the act; and German tourists frolicking on the sod in front of the MoMA (all captured by StreetFilms, of course). Then I saw photos of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome admiring Rebar Group's Parkcycle -- literally, a pedal-powered park on wheels -- and I realized that we had been foiled again. Back to the drawing board New York City Park(ing) fans. We've got 12 months to come up with something better than this...

Honorable mention this year goes to Los Angeles. The hometown of international parking guru Donald Shoup put together quite a Park(ing) Day with somewhere around 35 spots set up all over the city. You can download their map, read about it in the Los Angeles Times and look at photos on Flickr.

Finally, a Streetsblog tipster points us to some Park(ing) criticism from an unexpected source. Over at ESPN.com we get an inside-the-beltway, baby-boomerish perspective on Park(ing) Day from Gregg Easterbrook, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and New Republic, and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Perhaps unaware of real-world experience in places like Copenhagen, Paris and London, where traffic congestion has been reduced and quality of life improved by transforming on-street parking space into express bus lanes, bike paths, public plazas and even playgrounds, Easterbrook writes, "However on-street parking is priced, the core of the problem is the need to build more parking spaces and parking garages." Without providing much in the way of facts, data or best practices from other cities to back up his argument, he continues:

The idea that parking "only encourages more cars" is fallacious in the same way it's fallacious to argue that building roads only encourages cars. More cars are coming in any case: the questions are whether they will have places to park, and whether traffic will get a lot worse or only somewhat worse. Traffic jams and parking hassles are leading causes of modern stress. Stress is bad for us; thoughtful government planning should seek to make people's lives less stressful; this means more roads and a lot more parking spaces should be built. Roughly 2 percent of the global GDP is dedicated to parking costs. That's not enough!

Photo: Squash on Flickr

Depressed about the direction Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan is heading? Cheer yourself up by starting to plan for Park(ing) Day 2007. Friday, September 21 is the day when urban dwellers the world over pop quarters into parking meters and take over on-street spaces, temporarily transforming them into miniature parks, playgrounds, cafés and community spaces.

San Francisco is throwing down the gauntlet this year with the construction of the human-powered Parkcycle, above.

Streetsblog is looking for some New York City Park(ers) to step up and meet the challenge by building a parking space-sized studio apartment on wheels complete with Viking range, plasma television and plumbing. Take advantage of the cheapest rent in town -- on-street parking space.

Park(ing) Day San Francisco
A Clarence Eckerson Streetfilm
Running time: 6:51 - 22.05 MB, QuickTime

New York City Streets Renaissance Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson happened to be in San Francisco on Thursday during International Park(ing) Day. Organized by an art collective called Rebar Group, the idea behind Park(ing) is to reclaim curbside automobile parking spaces by temporarily transforming them into grassy parkland complete with benches, tables, chairs, trees, sandy beaches, and eclectic art installations. One park(ing) spot even offered a self-serve lemonade stand.

In San Francisco over two dozen parking spots were "liberated" including Mayor Gavin Newsome's space in front of City Hall. A number of other cities around the U.S. also participated in Park(ing) day, including New York City where a curbside space on 8th Avenue near 30th Street was, for a few hours, used for something other than automobile storage.

If you have links to Park(ing) events in other cities, please send them along.