Have you been listening to the Hell Gate Podcast? You can catch last week's episode here in audio and here in video.
In New York City, things change. Structures get old, outlive their usefulness, need to be replaced. This can be a painful process, prompting reflection, and often, contention. New for who? Replaced why? To whose benefit?
In the case of a set of 30-year-old pull-up bars in Tompkins Square Park, which in a few years will be temporarily torn down for a park renovation project, the answer to these three questions is glaringly obvious: The Parks Department is building a new, beautiful pool to replace an old decaying broken pool for the benefit of local children. The Parks Department needs to install some infrastructure beneath the current site of the pull-up bars and adjacent basketball courts, and after the City is done with that, both the basketball courts and the pull-up bars will be replaced, in brand-new condition. The project is still at least a year away from breaking ground and construction is expected to take around 18 months.