Just imagine the yam fufu!

Parks: what's there not to dislike?

A group of parks activists in Queens have been pushing "QueensWay," a linear park that would be built atop the old Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road in the central and southern parts of the borough. As New York Times opinion writer Eleanor Randolph put it in her pro-QueensWay piece, it "has no celebrity patrons, no Diane von Furstenberg, no Barry Diller, no big-name donors to give enough seed money to turn the park into a fashion statement."

But with a High Line-like makeover, she wrote, "QueensWay would offer both a walkway and a bike path. There could be small shops or stands featuring cheese guava buns, dim sum dumplings, pani puri or yam fufu."

Despite the lack of sweet socialite dough, QueensWay does have a few supporters in high places: Andrew Cuomo's administration gave the Trust for Public Land—now headed by former parks commissioner Adrian Benepe—half a million dollars to study the plan.

But it also has quite a few detractors.

Chief among them are transit advocates, who argue that the abandoned rail line could eventually be restored to active use—something that would be a lot harder if it meant taking away a park from Queens residents.

Reacting to the Times opinion piece, New York State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder, whose district stretches from Ozone Park to the Rockaways, tweeted, "Sandy has destroyed our transportation, but who cares when you can have good food options." (The title of the Times piece played up its tweeness: "A High Line in Queens: Just Think of the Food.")

One former transit manager wants to see the R train run along the old Rockaway Beach Branch line.

And it's not just grandstanding politicians who are opposed to the plan. "Many people have argued that the line should be reactivated as a branch of the Long Island Rail Road," wrote one anonymous retired New York City Transit Authority manager over at Cap'n Transit's blog. "This would be better than a greenway, but not as good as a connection to the Queens Boulevard subway line."

And aside from the route's transit potential, there are reasons to be skeptical that QueensWay could ever approach the success of the High Line.

The best argument came from the pages of The New York Times itself. Back in May 2011, urban theorist Witold Rybczynski gave the linear park trend a reality check: "Advocates would like to see the High Line model take off nationwide in the same way Central Park was copied in the 19th century. But that’s a tougher proposition than they think, and it probably won’t be worth the effort."

The High Line, he wrote, "courses through the meatpacking district and Chelsea, heavily populated, high-energy residential neighborhoods." In other words, it's not just the celebrity wattage that QueensWay lacks—it's also the demand.

As Jane Jacobs wrote in her urbanist classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, "Greatly loved neighborhood parks benefit from a certain rarity value."

The High Line provides a rare bit of greenery and open space in a dense neighborhood. QueensWay, on the other hand, would cut right through a large existing park—Forest Park—and traverse neighborhoods where, true to the "Park" in their names, many residents have green space right in their own backyards. Rego Park and Ozone Park are beautiful places, but they are rather suburban as New York City neighborhoods go, and have nowhere near the density or vibrancy—in other words, the potential park patronage—of the neighborhoods around the High Line.

Still, the QueensWay train chugs on. On March 13 the Trust for Public Land issued a request for proposal, and the plan has begun to take on an air of inevitability.

Projected to cost $75-100 million, QueensWay would be much cheaper than putting trains back on the Rockaway Beach Branch. With the MTA struggling to fund much more important projects in the outer boroughs, it's hard to see a new rail line getting funding any time soon. And the longer the Long Island Rail Road lets the viaduct grow dense with weeds, the louder the calls to turn it into a proper park will become.

Fight! Fight! (getlstd property)

The buzzing food vendors that pepper Central Park aren’t the only ones battling to shill their overpriced wares to tourists. Bicycle rental companies are warring over the right to wheel and deal by one of the Park entrances, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bike and Roll, a bike rental company, is playing the pitiful role of a besieged business, trumped by aggressive competitors. The rental company purchased the rights to use some prime real estate by a Park entrance—paying the city $65,000 a year plus a share of rental fees for the privilege.

Chris Wogas, manager of Bike and Roll, notes that his is the only company licensed to rent bikes and accompanying equipment near the park.

But despite Mr. Wogas’ monetary claim to the space, his competitors feel it’s a blow to their rights.

“Why is that they should be allowed to be there just because they shell out money?” Kenneth Winter, manager of Bike Rental Central Park, located on West 57^th Street, asked The Journal.

Apparently, Mr. Winter’s viewpoint is also embraced by other vendors. The streets are interspersed with various bike stands as well as peddlers who lures customers to nearby bike shops.

Mr. Wogas's “informal estimate” of the opposing vendors’ profits was $400,00 a year, which Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe told The Journal he believes is a little high.

But it's not only about the money. Mr. Wogas claims that the other vendors often irritate tourists, rent poor-quality equipment and conduct business illegally on park property–which may well be true, but we expect that's dismay over unexpected competition talking.

The dispute has even turned physical, and it's not limited to quaint techniques like letting the air out a competitor's tires. Mr. Wogas told The Journal that his employees have been threatened—with knives—by the other bike rental vendors and even has a protective order against a vendor who threatened to shoot Mr. Wogas’ field manager after a dispute.

Knife fights and gun threats? It sounds like McCarren Pool.

sgrothjan@observer.com

Benepe: Looking for a new spot in the sun

Commissioners' posts, much like visits to the park, have a flexible but finite timespan. And the end of a mayor's term looming in the not-too-distant future is as good a reason to leave a nice spot as a rumble of thunder in the distance.

Adrian Benepe, lover of carousels and longtime parks commissioner is bowing out, reports The New York Times.

Mr. Benepe has accepted a senior position at the Trust for Public Land. Maybe the expansion-loving commissioner of the last decade was tired of all the budget cuts? (The Parks Department is facing a proposed one of $33.4 million this year). But most likely, Mr. Benepe is pursuing greener grass after a decade in the post and some 30 years at the Parks Department.

Mr. Benepe started at the department in 1973 as a teenage seasonal helper in East River Park on Manhattan's Lower East Side, picking up litter and mopping locker rooms, slowly rising through the ranks until taking the top post in 2002.

“When New York City leads, cities, states and nations around the world follow," Mr. Bloomberg said, according to The Times. "Adrian Benepe has done extraordinary work as parks commissioner, leading transformative changes in every corner of New York City, and I couldn’t be prouder that he is going to lead the Trust for Public Land’s new initiative to replicate our work in cities across the country.”

Former parks commissioner Henry Stern also waxed poetic about his successor's skills. “His intimate knowledge of the emerald empire and the men and women who manage it will be enormously helpful as he seeks to spread New York City’s example nationwide," wrote Mr. Stern.  "He has had great success in working with community groups and building alliances of citizens and business groups to help improve parks. "

And at the very least, Mr. Benepe's successor should prove adept at community communication and alliance building. The mayor has named Veronica M. White, who is currently the founding executive director of the city's Center for Economic Opportunity, an anti-poverty non-profit, as Mr. Benepe's successort. We'll be watching eagerly to see how the city will mark Mr. Benepe's time at the helm of the department. A bench seems a little less-than.

kvelsey@observer.com

Horsing around. (Billy Farrell Agency)

At last week's opening of Jane's Carousel, perhaps the only person more excited than the legion of children and Ms. Walentas herself was Adrian Benepe, the city's Parks Department Commissioner. "I guess it comes with the territory of being a conservator of carousels," Mr. Benepe told The Observer, finishing off the last of his bag of popcorn. By Mr. Benepe's count, there are now at least 10, perhaps 12, carousels in the city, depending on how you count them. With the exception of one at Coney Island, all are found in the city's parks.

More than half of these whirling horses are under Mr. Benepe's purview: Central Park, Prospect Park, Flushing Meadows, Forest Park, the Bronx Zoo and Willowbrook. The others are located in Bryant Park, Riverbank State Park and Hudson River Park, with one under construction in Battery Park City and another planned for Steeplechase Park, a new city park at Coney Island. "It's interesting that all of our newest parks have carousels," Mr. Benepe remarked.

"This joins into the pantheon of great carousels. The stable, if you will."

He said he greatly admired the giant acrylic home Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel had erected around the carousel. "The shed is a work of art in itself," he said. "It's airy, not dark, like so many carousel sheds." Mr. Benepe knew from carousels, and not simply because of his three decades working at the Parks Department. There were also the fond memories of growing upo in the city, and riding the mechanical horses at Central Park. He marvels at how popular they all remain.

"It's amazing to see in my job, that over the decades, carousels still spin magic, not only for kids but also adults," Mr. Benepe said. "In a digital age, of computers and video games and smart phones, it's still enchanting. I think it's because we don't have experience riding horses. This is the closest thing most New Yorkers get to riding a horse."

It is this pastoral longing, mixed with our mechanical dynamism, that might help explain New York's unique standing in the world. "I think it's a guess, but New York may have the most carousels of any city in the whole country, if not the world," Mr. Benepe said. The Observer attempted to verify this later, and with the possible exception of Orlando, Fla., Mr. Benenpe may just be right.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Now, the mayor and the City Council want to extinguish smoking in the greensward, as well, and it appears a counter-proposal to set aside designated sections of parks for smoking has failed to take root. While concerns about civil liberties, public space and the Nanny State abound, the anti-butt proposal, which was debated during a raucous session of the City Council yesterday, seems to have enough support to pass the council as is.

"We're not taking away the right for someone to smoke; we're actually asking them to be conscious of not smoking around others, that impacts them from a health perspective," Scott Santarella, head of the American Lung Association New York, told WNYC. "They can still smoke in their car, in their home, we're just asking them not to smoke in public places." (It sounds like they'll be coming for the sidewalks next!)

There were also more colorful advocates in attendance at the council hearing, according to The Times:

Testimony ranged from people like David Goerlitz, the former "Winston Man" who, in a press conference before the hearing, said smokers are treated like "lepers and second-class citizens," to Joe Applebaum, a Brooklynite who equated second-hand smoke with rat poison and said smokers have "no consideration for their fellow man." 

Speaking of colorful, Councilman Peter Vallone of Queens, who proposed the alternative legislation creating separate smoking sections, said it was not as though he were proposing "a urinating section in a pool."

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

Thank you for painting such a grim outlook with your article. Fortunately you are wrong. We are not "washed up" and continue to have discussions with various City officials regarding our fate. We may, at the end of the day, lose our fight but it won't be any day soon.

The spokesperson that you spoke to is just towing the company line. I hope you will cover us when and if the Mayor puts a stop to Benepe's insanity.

But how far will the Grovers go? In a story in today's paper, the Times says that residents are considering a lawsuit, and may even simply refuse to leave. Kinda reminds the Real Estate Desk of what happened in Gaza a few years ago. And who could forget how that turned out?

mchaban@archpaper.com

Our take: With the relevance of Bravo's Work of Art plummeting, it looks like we've got to pin our art-competition hopes on YouTube Play, for better or for worse.
[NYT]

2. Museum of Patriotism Closes
The Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta will close its doors this week due to financial constraints after only six years. In a genius PR stunt, museum officials are spinning the closing as the beginning of a new "virtual museum," also known as a slightly beefed up website.

Our take: When Uncle Sam closes a door, he opens an Internet Explorer window. We should have known.
[AJC]

3. Lady Gaga Channels Duchamp
For a work titled "Armitage Shanks" at London's SHOWstudio.com gallery, Lady Gaga signed the side of a urinal with the words, "I'm not fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you." Works by artists including Terence Koh and Marilyn Minter are also available.

Our take: Lady Gaga's got the recipe for celebrity down pat: winking art history references, unnecessary use of the word "fucking," and, most importantly, not wearing pants.
[Artinfo]

4. A "Festive Auction" of Salander's Belongings
The remaining belongings of disgraced art dealer Lawrence Salander brought in $245,000 at auction over the weekend in Hudson, NY. Bloomberg described the atmosphere as "oddly festive," with buyers in Madras shorts munching on complimentary bagels in between bids for baroque candlesticks and porcelain vases.

Our take: Lawrence Salander may have been a liar and a cheat, but no one ever said he didn't have good taste.
[Bloomberg]

5. Adams Negatives Worth $200 Million Found at Garage Sale
Art and forensic experts believe that 65 glass plates purchased at a Fresno garage sale are in fact photographic negatives taken by Ansel Adams. The historically significant collection could be worth more than $200 million, although some still doubt its authenticity. Painter Rick Norsigian bought the negatives for $45 when he was looking for a barber chair at a garage sale in 2000.  

Our take: This found art trend is really starting to make us feel left out. It's like every basement but ours secretly holds the climax to Antiques Roadshow.
[CNN, WSJ]

6. Largest Restitution Suit in History Filed Against Hungary
Heirs of a Hungarian banker have filed a lawsuit against the Hungarian government and several museums it oversees, in what experts say is the world's largest unresolved Holocaust art claim. The collection, which includes works by El Greco, Velázquez, and Monet, is valued at over $100 million.

Our take: Hungary has an unflattering history of refusing to entertain restitution claims, but this one is too big to ignore.
[NYT]

7. Delta Goes Dali
To celebrate Dali's upcoming exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Delta (weirdly billed as the "Official Airline of the High Museum of Art") has decorated a 757 plane with a Dali-style mustache.

Our take: Why doesn't every museum have an official airline? JetBlue planes could have Andy Warhol's platinum hair painted on top.
[Art Daily]

8. Artforum Editor Steps Down
Artnet takes a look back at Tim Griffin, Artforum's editor-in-chief for the last seven years. Dubbed "the Jiminy Cricket of the artworld," Griffin's hyper-self-conscious stance led to a contradictory editorial policy and an undoubtedly educational read, according to the article.

Our take: Artnet's overview is perceptive-but when the differences between an editor and his predecessor are this minute, one has to wonder what it is he'll be remembered for.
[Artnet]

9. Art Conservation Efforts Continue in Haiti
American art conservator Rosa Lowinger describes the daunting restoration of three beloved murals at the Cathedral of Sainte Trinité in Port-Au-Prince. The article is accompanied by vivid photos of the restoration site.

Our take: Lowinger dares to ask the obvious but difficult question: Is art restoration in such a devastated area an unnecessary luxury?
[WNYC Gallerina]

10. New City Rules Aim to Regulate Street Artists
Regulations restricting the location and number of stands artists can set up in public parks to sell their work went into effect last week. The rules have sparked bitter protest from the artists and a bit of chaos in the parks.

Our take: While limiting artist stands may maintain the integrity of the parks, the selected locations-sometimes too close to sprinklers and the street-need to be reconsidered.
[NYO]

He arrived two minutes early. Handsome, bespectacled, and with just enough hair, Benepe has a golden glow of a man who spends a healthy amount of his time outdoors, in parks.

As Benepe shook hands, Rick Bell, the center’s executive director, waited behind him holding a black “NYC Parks” hat. When Benepe turned, Bell handed him the hat and a silver pen, asking for an autograph. The commissioner took the hat and wrote across the bill, “To Rick—keep it green—Adrian Benepe.”

Benepe has become something of a local celebrity over the course of his thirty years in the Parks Department. It all started in 1973, when a teenage Benepe worked seasonally in East River Park on the Lower East Side, mostly picking up litter and mopping locker room floors. In the decades that followed he held many positions in the department: Director of Natural Resources & Horticulture, Director of Art & Antiquities, and, finally commissioner, when Michael Bloomberg appointed him in 2002.

After a brief, glowing introduction by the chairman of the A.I.A., Benepe took the podium and asked, “Did anyone walk through Washington Square Park on their way here?”

Several hands went up.

“How did it look to you?”

A unanimous “good” came back from the audience.

“Really?” he said, “I saw a lot of trash. And I noticed some illegal advertising.”  

“I want to begin,” Benepe said, “by drawing attention to the fact that it is the 400th Anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival. Much of the city’s urban landscape is owed to the Dutch. There were no parks in New Amsterdam; they had plens. Bowling Green was one such plen and it then became the city’s first public park.”

Benepe talked about the three main eras of park development in the city: He praised Frederick Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s great urban parks of the 1850s. The City Beautiful movement at the turn of the century, he said, resulted in the first public playground in the city (Seward Park). Benepe was positive on the legacy of Robert Moses, whose tenure as parks commissioner, according to Benepe, succeeded in producing “pleasure grounds for the common man.”

Like most of the city, the 1970s was a dark period for parks.

“This was what the parks environment was like when I became a park ranger. You either had to be crazy or have extremely rose-hued glasses to think it could come back from that.”  (He did not say which of these applied to him.)

“New Yorkers don’t have backyards,” he said. “This is a place for them to exercise, but also to contemplate. We want them to exercise their bodies, but we also want it to be a place where people can exercise their minds, to contemplate and do nothing. A park should be a place to be alone, and a place to be in a crowd. And fundamentally, stealing from the Italian, it is a place for <em>far niente</em>, or to do nothing.”

He spelled out the four main goals of the parks department. One is adaptive reuse, like making McCarren Park Pool a concert venue (and, well, now a pool). Two, more facilities for the public. Three, opening the waterfront, particularly the industrial Brooklyn waterfront as a planned “Greenway.” Four, the building of major public recreation venues, which sounded a little like Goal 2.

“The Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island is argued by many to be the most state-of-the art track facility in the world and it is the track on which Usain Bolt broke the 100 meter record,” he said. “We want to encourage the spirit of building great civic facilities for sport.”

Near the end of the event, he said, “People really do respond to beauty and to good design. And as First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris wisely said, ‘Good design doesn’t have to be anymore expensive than bad design.’ Great creative design enhances great functional designs. These buildings can’t just look good, they have to function.”

“I think we should focus on horticulture. I mean, we’re the parks department right? I really believe flowers have a calming effect on people. I mean, I’ve never seen a fist fight in front of a flower bed.”

“Two ferocious teams have gathered here today, on this field, to compete in the greatest sport in history,” announced Alex Benepe, son of Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, at a muddy McCarren Park in Greenpoint last month as an MTV camera circled around him. After a dramatic pause, the young Mr. Benepe—looking like an old-time carnival barker in a black suit and striped tie, with a scepter in his hand and a squat black top hat on his blond mane—bellowed, “This is Quidditch!”

For the past three years, Mr. Benepe has served as commissioner of the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, a group that has turned the fictional flying wizard sport from the Harry Potter books into an aggressive ground game played at more than 100 colleges.

Mr. Benepe played his first match during his freshman year at Middlebury College, where he majored in art history, then became commissioner his sophomore year and began promoting Quidditch to other schools. He developed an official rule book, derived from the Potter book series, in which seven-player teams try to throw balls through several hoops and capture a “snitch.”

Players must also keep a gnarled broomstick—custom-made for the league—between their legs at all times, but otherwise: “We don’t put too many rules on physical contact,” said Mr. Benepe, who’s currently interning at MoMA. “We had one good game that was really bloody. They had an ambulance on standby in case we needed to use it.”

Most of the afternoon was choreographed by MTV, which recently aired the first of four Quidditch commercials promoting the new Harry Potter movie. “The real Quidditch games are better,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who watched the Quidditch World Cup his son organized at Middlebury last year. Commissioner Benepe claimed the conditions in the MTV commercial were not his fault. “We offered for them to play on synthetic turf, but they wanted something muddy and dangerous,” he told the Transom. (Much to his chagrin—after about 10 of the players came to use his shower after the game. “There was so much mud and ball-field clay in our house for weeks,” he said.)

Commissioner Benepe was also there to plug the sport at the groundbreaking of Bushwick Inlet Park in Williamsburg on Monday. Quidditch was listed as one of the possible activities at the new park, and the parks commissioner corrected Mayor Bloomberg when he mispronounced it. “Even the mayor knew about Quidditch,” he told the Transom. “It’s out there.”

Bids on the city's top-grossing eatery are due on Monday, May 18, but Mr. Meyer, an early favorite for the famous space, has decided to withdraw his name from the competition.

According to a statement from Mr. Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group:

“After careful consideration, we have elected not to submit a bid for the restaurant to succeed Tavern on the Green. As passionate New Yorkers, we were excited and tempted by the opportunity to envision how to transform such a magnificent place into a new institution for our city to cherish. After a thorough review of the [city's Request for Proposals], we ultimately concluded that the overall business opportunity unfortunately did not make sense for us at this time.

We remain excited to follow the developments as the City considers the next chapter of such a historic location.”

Mr. Meyer, whose name inevitably comes up anytime a high-profile restaurant space becomes available, had shown some initial interest in the lucrative location back in March, sending representatives to a meeting of potential candidates for the 25,000-square-foot venue.

But that was before he was announced as the newest operator at Ian Schrager's posh Gramercy Park Hotel. Mr. Meyer also recently took on the hefty task of concessionaire at the New York Mets' new Citi Field stadium in Willet's Point.

The city's current contract with the late LeRoy's family expires at the end of the year. The family has vowed to outbid all rivals for the space.

Smith & Wollensky founder Alan Stillman, Boathouse owner Dean Poll and Capitale operator Seth Greenberg have also expressed interest.