Good morning. It's Wednesday. Today we'll look at the return of twice-a-week alternate-side parking for drivers in Manhattan, the Bronx and much of the rest of the city. And we'll eavesdrop on one awe-struck but ambivalent fireworks-watching party on Brooklyn's waterfront. |
 | | Brittainy Newman for The New York Times |
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It was good while it lasted. |
Since June 2020, drivers in many New York City neighborhoods have been able to halve the percentage of their waking hours devoted to moving their vehicles out of the paths of the Sanitation Department's white, broom-spinning street sweepers. |
During the pandemic, alternate-side parking, that special New York automotive dance, was cut back to once a week throughout the city. On Tuesday, the old schedule came roaring back. |
Like the sweepers brandishing their whirligig brushes and trailing clouds of dust and leaves — a majestic sight that inspired my oldest child's first compound word, "broom truck!" — the return of the mandated car-moving schedule brought some commotion. |
A row of parked cars with fresh parking tickets on their windshields could be seen Tuesday on a stretch of Riverside Drive in Morningside Heights, my colleagues Hurubie Meko and Corey Kilgannon report. |
"A lot of people didn't get the memo," said Michael Bergelson, surveying that scene. |
He added a common urban driver's lament, perhaps channeling some 1,700 people who had signed a petition as of Tuesday to maintain the once-a-week schedule: "If you live in New York and own a car, your life revolves around alternate-side parking." |
But that's just it: If you live in New York and own a car. |
Mayor Eric Adams did not emphasize this when he announced in April that the rules were returning to normal, but climate experts say that making it more expensive and less convenient to drive around the nation's densest city is a key step in cleaning up New York's air and reducing its contribution to the climate crisis. |
Emissions from burning fossil fuels drive the global heating that threatens New Yorkers and others with flash floods, intense storms and extreme heat, and vehicles are second only to buildings as a source of pollution in the city. |
City Hall has instead cited another growing problem: a pandemic increase in street trash and rat populations. |
"Having cleaner streets is more important than the inconvenience of us having to move our cars more often," Joe Goddu, another Morningside Heights driver, conceded as he tried to work on his laptop, perched on the hood of the Subaru he was babysitting until he could legally leave it where it stood. |
Mr. Adams, a devoted biker, did say the $9 million the city is investing to improve cleaning will include the use of small mechanical sweepers on protected bike lanes, which have multiplied as part of an effort to get more people out of cars. |
Expect a mostly sunny day near the high 80s. At night, it's mostly cloudy. Temperatures will be around the low 70s. |
In effect until Saturday (Eid al-Adha). |
 | | Mike Catalini/Associated Press |
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This particular 4th had an edge for some New Yorkers. |
 | | Desiree Rios/The New York Times |
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The blue starbursts shone like floating sapphires. The red sparks danced in the air with the red dots of helicopters and the red logos of the Manhattan skyline. The gold shimmery ones drifted like willow branches behind the dark silhouettes of the port's loading cranes. |
There were literal oohs and aahs on Monday night from the wheelhouse of the Mary A. Whalen, the retired tanker docked in Brooklyn's Red Hook section that serves as a maritime museum and education center, where a decent cross-section of the diverse neighborhood had gathered for a very local Independence Day. |
Children had swum during the hotter hours in inflatable pools. Jelly doughnuts and hot dogs had arrived as pot luck. Now, the stereo view of relatively distant fireworks — Jersey City's between the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center and Manhattan's farther north behind several bridges — was, as usual, just perfect for the neighborhood's residents, especially those who, for various reasons, don't enjoy bangs and explosions. |
Watching the red glare and smoke, I thought that 9/11 memories, too, were distant enough for enough of us for this to be … fine. I suddenly recalled an intense feeling of safety that I felt as a child on my dad's shoulders in the chaos and crowds of booming fireworks at the Bicentennial in 1976, and on other Fourths past. |
But when I clanked down the ladder to the deck, I found neighbors huddled around their beers and burgers darkly dissecting, and linking, recent news events. The mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill. The Supreme Court ruling striking down New York's tight restrictions on concealed-carry gun permits. The gunman in Buffalo who targeted a Black neighborhood. |
Women on deck half-joked about having less patience for men in their lives since the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Tiffiney Davis, who runs the Red Hook Art Project, had told me days earlier that the reversal of Roe was forcing young women who were graduates of her program into a strange dilemma: They had "made new lives for themselves away from the city," where violence had marked their childhoods, or enrolled in out-of-state colleges, or made plans to "see the country," she said. But now some were considering sticking with New York, because "their rights are not protected in other states, and that's a different kind of fear." |
The common theme: The court rulings were out of step with a majority of Americans and New Yorkers, but delivered by the same political system the fireworks celebrated. There was a sense that New York feels like more of an island city than usual. |
People on the deck had moved to America — to New York, specifically — from Peru and China and Russia and Israel. The fact that we were all here together, the host pointed out, is something to celebrate about America. Or was it, another guest said, something to celebrate about New York City? |
Along the waterfront that day from Dumbo down to Red Hook, the vibe had been pretty darn great. On Pier Six, a middle-aged former camp counselor helped three young women — strangers — pitch a tent that had flummoxed them. Big families — of every race, speaking several languages — barbecued by the sparkling East River. One family, after a five minute chat, even offered me a spot on their blanket for the fireworks show. I walked home alone after midnight feeling safe, suffused with love for the reflections in Buttermilk Channel and the halal carts being towed home. |
This morning, as I went out to walk the dog, someone set off firecrackers across the street. It wasn't only the poodle who jumped. |
Once, when I lived in a fifth-floor walk-up on West 71st Street, I decided to take a narrow shelving unit I had found on the sidewalk back to the curb. |
A few days after putting it out, I was walking down Broadway with my mother when we passed a street vendor. |
I quickly noticed that one of the many items he had for sale was my old shelving unit. |
Out of curiosity, I asked him the price. |
He took a long look at me. |
"Normally, it's $15," he said. "But you have a nice face. How about 10?" |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — A.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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