On Tuesday evening, a group of a few dozen demonstrators gathered at the calisthenics bars in Tompkins Square Park, and then marched together to a meeting of Manhattan's Community Board 3 on the Lower East Side. They carried signs bearing slogans like "No One Asked For This," and "Repair! Don't Destroy!"
The demonstrators are pissed about the Parks Department's planned project to replace the basketball courts, pool, and, most controversially, the exercise bars. The work will make the park more accessible, safer for children, and less prone to flooding. It'll replace the above-ground pool with a larger, in-ground pool. It's expected to take about 18 months, during which parts of the park will be closed—an almost unbearable scenario for many vocal park users.
The community board meeting immediately turned rancorous, with a pro-bars advocate screaming at a board member to "get the fuck out of my fucking face." Board Chair Arnette Scott threatened to call the cops on multiple preservationists, who jeered through a presentation by a representative for the Parks Department. The beleaguered bureaucrat strained to be heard as he confirmed their plans still included replacing the bars with "high quality materials," and bringing the area up to "all applicable codes, including ones that have to do with approach by wheelchairs, and clearances for circulation and safety."
Paul de Rienzo, a retired teacher who later told me he doesn't use the bars, caused such a scene that the Parks Department had to cut their presentation short without explaining what "underlying issues" they had found with the concrete below the basketball courts in their plans to add stormwater detention tanks.
Watching the display, it was hard to decide whether I was becoming an arch liberal, ashamed that the crowd of crowing hippies and tatted software engineer "punks" couldn't act like respectable adults, or a burgeoning Stalinist realizing that bureaucrats should not be accountable to the public. At any rate, I discovered I hated to see New Yorkers make their voices heard, or at the very least thought a poor example of civic engagement was being set for the multiple children in attendance.
Other than the pull-up bar obsessives, the public comments consisted of neighbors decrying an affordable housing complex being built on Fifth Street, and others urging the board to reject a restaurant permit because the ventilation system would be too noisy.