NY Puppet Library

Amalgamated Puppet Libraries

The Puppet Free Library in Boston will be open Tuesdays 2-7 PM after Feb. 19 For an appointment at another time, call 617 536-3355 ext. 26.

The Puppet Lending Libraries are stocked with parade puppets and banners, twenty-foot tall Big City and Mother Earth puppets, twelve-foot dancing cats, enormous flowers, puppet horses for children to ride, and a wide variety of dragons. All these elements are loaned out to enliven school and community events, neighborhood parades, celebrations, and demonstrations in the cities of New York and Boston.
The Puppet Libraries began in Boston, as the Back Alley Puppet Theater, and, later, the Puppeteers' Cooperative created numerous parades for the First Night Grand Procession over the years, starting with First Night's inception in 1976. These puppets were loaned to the public in an informal custom which was gradually formalized as the Puppet Library in around 1995. In 2003, the Puppeteers Cooperative, in collaboration with Flying Bridge Arts, opened the New York Puppet Library in Red Hook, Brooklyn, using the overflow of puppets from the Boston library. In 2004, Prospect Park, in return for a yearly series of free outdoor performances in the park, allowed the library to move into the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch at Prospect Park, where the original puppets were joined by puppets created for a yearly pageant commissioned by the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival and other New York events, as well as more puppets from Boston. For a happy period, see: Life in the Arch

Dragon section, Boston Puppet Free Library

The Puppet Free Library is located, by the kindness of Emmanuel Church, in the basement of 15 Newbury Street but is entered by the back door. This is in public alley 437, between Newbury and Commonwealth streets, in the block between Arlington and Berkely,
It lends puppets and banners in the Greater Boston area.

Open by appointment in April - May of 2014

For more information, call Sara Peattie at (617) 263-2031, or (617) 536-3355 ext.26.

The New York Puppet Library is currently open by appointment only

Call Theresa Linnihan, at 718 853-7350 We have a new space, in conjuction with Puppetry in Practice , in the Arts Lab at Roosevelt House at Brooklyn College. If you have an unused empty space, even a temporary one, in the New York area, and think that you might like a puppet library, contact Sara Peattie at puppetco@gis.net
If you have accumulated enough giant puppets that you find yourself lending them out, join The Amalgamated Puppet Libraries! Send information and a photo to: puppetco@gis.net
Puppeteers' Cooperative Home Page


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William H Whyte Findings

1. Location—How far will people walk to urban parks? “The effective market radius is about three blocks”.
2. “Supply creates demand”—The more quality parks, the more users
3. Sociability index – The more groups, the more people. “The high proportion of people in groups … is often because they have decided to go there.” Choice is one measure of success. Groups of people attract more people than singles do.
4. Women—“If a plaza has a markedly lower than average proportion of women, something is wrong…Women are more discriminating.”
5. Peaks—“80% per cent of the total hours of use will be concentrated “ between 11 am and 2 pm.
6. Off peak uses are revealing—When there are lots of sitting choices, those picked reveal what is most popular.
7. Men—Tend to take the front row seats.
8. Lovers—Also out tend to sit in front.
9. “Self congestion” – “What attracts people most…is other people”.  People speak of “getting away from it all” but “what people do reveals a different priority.” People hold conversations in the middle of sidewalks, “they sit in the mainstream” of plazas. They favor crowded places.
10. Other Cities —Behavior in the largest cities (eg. Copenhagen, Tokyo, Milan) reflected New York’s findings.

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Activities Recreation for Adults

We do not need meaningless plaza  containing  a handful of benches. " 

-Chelsea Resident 1968 

As shown in the entries on the 3 Minute Park, Chelsea does a really good job of giving residents a place to sit within 3 minutes of wherever they are in Chelsea.  But when people get to those spots many people  find nothing of interest  to do in them except sit.

I was at  Union Square park  talking to a young fellow  and he said to me that" there's a playground for the kids and seats for the old people but nothing for us".


  I'm bored silly  too.  I have a park right down the block from where I live, but I rarely  go there because it offers no reaction activities that are of interest to me.  Instead I go to parks that are over  1/2 mile away from  me that do offer activities that do interest me. But because of the distance I do not go as often as I would like.

Is everybody bored in our parks? No. Large numbers of people are perfectly satisfied. But the ones that aren't satisfied are the ones that don't use the parks. If a park doesn't meet your recreation  needs, you may not use it or use it only infrequently. What's needed is to offer activities that meet the vast majority of everyone's recreation needs. Trouble is with the exception of Bryant park  most of our parks in CB4/CB5 have chosen not to offer activities recreation.

Lack of Money for staff and lack of room, seem to be two of the reasons given  for not having  activvities recreation.

I mentioned the lack of activities to several larger BID/Parks Conservancies and was told things like  "we have no room"  This is not true.  Lets look at several  case where there is room, and see how this can be duplicated elsewheres.

Bryant Park has room for a games area and offers over 35 games. Plus a reading room, and ping pong.  While visiting Bryant park I ran into a fellow who came down from the Bronx to play here, because it was the closest location  that had a facility.

 They are a very rich park, with a lot of staff. but its also possible to do something with sless wealthy parks  with smaller staff.



This is an indoor games atrium at the Bank of Americas building that supplies chess tables but no chess sets or other games.
 

  A Games cabinet(below)  can easily be added to this atrium, making it far more useful for the community. 

This is Herald Square park, there is room for an outdoor games cabinet here

In the park is  a manned  visitors information booth. I sat down nerar it and watched the number of people that stopped by and asked for information. It was an average of  of 4 people per hour when I was there. What this means is that the person behind this booth hand out games, and/or keep an eye on an outdoor reading room cabinet.




Will there be losses of people stealing games and books? Possibly, but there are already people stealing chairs that cost $200-400, and what done is to consider this part of the cost of running these parks.

Here are 13 spaces in CB4 that either have staff or are locked where this could possibly  work::

Outdoor Spaces
Herald Square Park
Greely Square park
Flatiron Plaza
Chelsea Triangle


Indoor Spaces
 Bof A Atrium

Locked Spaces
Alices garden
Bob's Park
Threasas park
Juan  Alonso park & Community Garden

Oaisis Community garden
Astros Dog Run
Clinton Community garden
Fulton senior Center garden

Moore Thoughts

Clement Clark Moore Park is a wonderful little neighborhood  park in Chelsea, that is great for kids but for teens, adults.and seniors offers little more than a bench to sit on

Here are several low cost ideas to transform it to better meet the recreation needs of all age groups

Moveable seating and tables
-Benches are great for sitting, but lousy for socializing or playing board games. Adding Moveable tables and chairs  will allow seniors to better socialize  this park.


Fixed bench seating at around edges of space at Chelsea's Clark Clement Moore Park. No social seating is available at this park.  The sitting portion of this  park has a great deal of  empty space, which is of no use to users of the park.

 Here's another Moore Park, Moore Homestead Park in Elhurst Queens. It  offers social seating in the form of   fixed tables and chairs that are far more accommodating to the conversation and recreation needs of these seniors. Note the seniors here are playing board games, not a possibility at  our Moore park. The type of seating used here  is not reconfigurable.
 
 link


           The best type of social seating  is the moveable  tables and chairs  that can be found at Flatiron Plaza,. This is "have it your way seating"  that enhances conversations and other recreational activities. This seating can also be easily moved when a community function requires a open space. 

Flatiron Plaza seating link

 Moveable seating at Chelsea's 14th Street Park

For more information of the importance of movable seating click here Tables & chairs: Seating then engage seniors

Outdoor reading room (aka Read Fi Hotspot)
 Chelsea is a library poor community. By adding outdoor reading rooms to our parks, we can create more reading recreation opportunities in Chelsea for both kids and adults

                                    A low cost outdoor reading room module can easily be installed on a park bench

As part of Park Chelsea's Citizens Committee of NYC grant, we're installed  a Outdoor reading room at the Elliot Chelsea houses. along with the reading  room container, they'll be getting 100 children's books.

For kids books work just fine in an outdoor reading room. For adults rather then books  we will be stocking the out  door reading rooms with a variety of magazines.

  For more pictures of outdoor reading room possibilities click here Outdoor Reading Rooms aka ReadFi Hotspots

For more thoughts on transforming our parks check out: The Park Chelsea plan 

Signage that reveals Secret parks

Numerous private enteties have made deals with the city to create Privately Owned Public Spaces.

The original POPS law did not include any obligation to reveal the public aspects of these spaces, so for many of the earliest opened spaces no signage exists that they are public spaces. For POPS opened under amendments to the law ,the signage is generally minimal and is not very visible from the street.

Recently the High Line hotel wanted a loading spot and in return for this said they would add a sign to their garden that  it is public. Here is the garden. See the tiny sign...

 It says Please enjoy our garden.  I suspect not many people passing by will see this sign.

Below is the Archstone Clinton

 The area on the right is supposed to be a public area. there is no signage to that effect. In2011  CB4 complained to the City Planning Commission about  Archstone  not living up to their public space agreement. The last timein 2013  I was there they were still not living up to the agreement.

In these and other 100 other spaces, it's hard to force the owners of the space to live up to their agreements.Or to put up signage where there is no agreement.  But what can be done is to place signage on city property letting the public know that the spaces are public.

Permission Spaces: Giving strangers permission to talk to each other

If you have a dog or baby  strangers  will talk to you. Otherwise  strangers do not usually talk to strangers. We''ll create permission spaces that allow this...

Talk to me bench signs: 

 Talk to me signs on a few benches in each park will give neighbors permission to interact with whoever is sitting on the bench with the sign.

Activities partner bulletin boards

  Posted in parks these bulletin boards will help residents find play partners.

Getting A Bus Shelter for every bus stop in New York City

Recently we had a Citybench installed at 25th St and 8th Ave bus stop.


  Older adults   sit on it as they wait for a bus and really appreciate it's being there. Many people  would  have preferred a bus shelter there , but it ain't gonna happen for several reasons .

- Lack of room
 A bus shelter takes a certain minimum amount of space 
and that space is not available  at this site .Community board 4 had asked for over 50 bus shelters in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen all were turned down due  space issues and we suspect hidden issues.

-Cost

In 2005 NYC signed  a contract with Cemusa to install 3200 bus shelters in NYC. In 2013 an additional 200 shelters were installed. We now have somewhere's around 3500 bus shelters.

3500 bus shelters  may seem to be a large figure but it's not because there are over 15,000 bus stops in NYC. That means over 10,000 bus stops have no shelter.

Now if Cemusa could sell enough advertising to populate 15,000 bus shelters then I suspect we'd have 15,000  as we don't have 15,000 I think there is simply not enough advertising to support this number.


NYC has a bus shelter monoculture. Only one bus shelter model  that it installs the   Cenusa shelter, that comes in several different lengths and widths.. I don't know the actual cost but having looked at a number of shelters I'd  say a minimal  figure is  $30,000.At that  figure 10,000 shelters  would cost $300,000,000 (that's three hundred MILLION dollars) . If we add maintenance costs to the shelters it's a lot more.


The Cemusa shelter is tightly couples. All elements (seating, wind and  rain protection) reside in one package that takes up a lot of room. and will not fit at anty of the 52 locations we requested them at.



Alternative bus  shelters to the Cemusa bus shelter

I know our contract with cemusa does not preclude pplacing benches at bus stiops, but Does our contract with Cemusa preclude the installation of any other bus shelters at our bus stops? I don't know but even if it didn't installing shelters at all our stops would still cost a great deal.  A enclosed shelter that cost just $10,000 installed would still cost $100,000,000 to cover all bus stops and this figure does not cover the need to clean the shelters on a regular basis.



Is it possible to create a  bus shelter that  has a near zero footprint and costs a minimal amount?

The answer to this question is yes.

Near Zero Footprint
Here's a bus shelter design  that is being used in santa Monica California that has a near zero ground level footprint.



link


 One of the great things about this design is it's modular. In a location with little  room. a Single module has a very small ground level footprint, while offering both seating and rain protection. And unlike traditional bus shelters which are a one piece retungular object  the iifferent parts of a San Diego shelter can be mixed and matched and do not even have to physically connect.

 
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(picture ) show pictures...
Because of the NYC subweay this sportlike many on 7th ave could not support a Cemusa shelter. It could support a Santa Monica style shelter.




There'sseating and  rain protection in the santa monica shelter but no wind protection..  The west side is getting a new 12th avenue bus line. It's very windy near the river, so you would not place one of these there. However inland where days that are both rainy AND  windy are rare they will protect MOST of the time. Now given that 10,000 bus stops offer no shelter at all, and that implementing  a design that protects peiople in all 10,000 stops  under all conditions all  of the time ain't gonna happen. A design that protecta  all  of them under most conditions all of the time is a pretty good deal.




  low cost?

Ten thousand shelters of the Santa Monica design will still cost big bucks. Is it possible to implement a similar design at a fraction of the cost? yes. by piggybacking on existing infrastructure?

Bus stops have poles with information for riders.





By adding San Diego style umbrellas to them we don't have to put in new poles to create a single module bus shelter umbrella.  In Raleigh, NC  this was added to a bus stop pole.



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The raligh awning is not solid, here's an example of one that is that was installed on a pole byour own  34th Street Partnership,( the origibnators of DOT's Citybench)

santa Monic styler Citclers could just as well be added to these poles. 

     !           !      !     !
---------------------------------
(show block where multiple poles can all get umbrellas attached)

     __       __    __   __
     !           !      !     !
---------------------------------








Modular Toolbox

Currently NYC offers  one bus shelterdesign  and one  bench design for all bus stops. Both of these are one design fits all solutions.  To offer shelter and seating at all 10,000 stops with we need a selecctions of designs with different foot prints and costs
\, so that no longer will people be told "it don't fit" and the city can afford to do all.


Wwhat's needed is   Multiple solutions athat can be mixed and match together


 As I stated before we have 10,000 bus stops without shelters To put standard shelters in all 10,000 bus stops is way too  expensive and in many cases there's not enough room. By creating a toolbox of  many low cost modular designs that piggyback on existing infrastructure we can do this.

Here's several more  possible designs that could be part of the toolbox


Citybench seating Module
 We  have citybenches at some of our  bus stops.   They are the first module that would be in this toolkit

  Wind
How does wind flow in an urban street canyon? I susoect it will

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/env_review/western_rail/appendix_k.pdf


Windshields

 http://amychengstudio.com/skills/faceted-glass-windscreens/


 The branding banners that BIDS put up have no function other then orenementation

What about some "windshield banners at bus stops"



Combined zero footprint windshield
seating, rain, wind

http://www.callforentry.org/fair_plans/1150.pdf

 Tree Pit Seating Module
  A  Cemusa bus shelter cannot go wthin 5 feet of a tree pit A  citybench  cannot go wthin 3 feet of a tree pit . At bus stops The Myrtle Ave BID  the myrtle avenue tree pit guard is the bench  allowing for placement in spaces where  no  Cemusa shelter or citybench would be allowed. .. By turning the treepit into the seating we essentially create a  near zero footprint seating. module.


link

The folks at Softwalks can up with a great idea to dual purpose sidewalk sheds by adding seating to them




many fire hydrants have




By attatching seats to these poles we once again piggybacxk on existing infrastructure, to create a low cost,  seat that only minimally adds another piece of frrniture to a sidewalk.