Fixcity.org is amazing! It is a pro-active approach to all those frustrating moments when you find yourself standing on the street, muttering where the #$% is a bike rack! Now you can request racks for all those locations.

Here’s a recap of the day told to us by spot organizer Lacey Tauber and photo by Dan Latorre:

The Open Planning Project, the TA Brooklyn Committee, and local community advocacy group NAG (Neighbors Allied for Good Growth) teamed up on Park(ing) Day to present a new website, FixCity.org Bike Racks. FixCity.org is an online platform communities can use to map desired bike rack locations. The pilot neighborhood is Greenpoint-Williamsburg so we set up our Park(ing) Space at Bedford and North 7th Street, right by the Bedford Avenue L train. Using a solar-powered laptop charger borrowed from our friends at Solar One, we premiered the site to passersby who used the interactive mapping tool to request new bike rack locations in the neighborhood. The goal of the site is to ultimately present 300 new, fully vetted bike rack orders to the Department of Transportation. If this pilot project is successful, the tool can be used citywide!

In addition to promoting FixCity, we also gave “bike therapy,” handing out TA’s Biking Rules guide, and promoting the upcoming Biking Rules PSA Festival!

Check out more photos from the hosts’ Flickr accounts:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neotint/3933431672/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51452761@N00/sets/72157622285501143/

Park(ing) Day NYC: to-do-to-do

Let’s rock peoples’ minds and inspire them to re-envision their streets!  The following guidelines will help you do just that and make Park(ing) Day NYC stress-free, fun, well-documented, conscientious and connected:

1. Bring your required materials

In addition to the materials you’re using for your spot, you must have the following at your park:

1. Street Activity Permit (to show NYPD or anyone else questioning your space’s legality—also very useful for asking car idlers to move and let you park-it)

1. Official Sign (so people know this is a public space that they can participate in)

1. Park(ing) Day NYC Maps (listing all the spots in the City – for you to distribute)

**Pick up these required materials at T.A.’s office—127 W. 26^th Street (between 6^th and 7^th Avenues), 10^th Floor—TODAY, September 17^th, from 8am-7pm.***

2. Keep it legal

Make sure your spot is in a legal parking space. “Spots” can not be in places that impede other people’s way or put visitors in danger: no crosswalks, bike lanes, fire hydrants, driveways, no standing anytime zones and bus stops.

3. Document your hard work, your ingenious creation and the experience of passers-by!

1. Photos: Take a bunch throughout the day, and upload to your account at parkingdaynyc.org and tag more with “parkingdaynyc” on Flickr. There’s also a Park(ing) Day NYC Flickr group that you can join and add photos to.
2. Tweet, tweet!: Send your park(ing) spots status updates via text message to nvfxtj(at)twittermail(dot)com. You can also receive text message parkingdaynyc twitter updates from other spots by signing up for a Twitter account online.
3. Video: Can you take some? Please send us your digital files and upload to YouTube after the event.  Cell phone, digital camera or flip camera quality is perfect.
4. The Blog: Send us write-ups about your spot and the planning process, or exciting occurrences throughout the day to info(at)parkingdaynyc.org .

4. Leave No Trace

This saying has just as much sway in our urban environment as it does when hiking in the rural wilderness.  Please collect or discard any trash or items left in your spot at the end of the day.

If you read today’s StreetBeat you may have heard - POP.Park finalist entries will be included in a workshop at the upcoming Conflux Festival. Conflux is an annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice.

At Conflux, people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures come together to re-imagine the city as a playground, a space for positive change and an opportunity for civic engagement. It’s the perfect place to talk about Park(ing) Day and POP.Park.

Friday September 18, Park(ing) Day, T.A. will host an interactive, mobile workshop to discuss Park(ing) Day NYC, POP.Park and other creative ways to re-define our streets as places for people and not just cars. T.A. will lead a tour from the festival to the POP.Parks - set-up at a secret location in the city. (check back soon for more information)

This year’s Conflux Festival starts on September 17 and runs through September 20. Join us in building the dialogue about NYC’s valuable public space and how we choose to use it. For more information, schedules and a complete list of participants, go to http://confluxfestival.org/2009/.

Park(ing) Day NYC is seeking architects, designers and artists interested in collaborating with community groups to produce Park(ing) Spots in collaboration with NYC community groups. These spots will be inventive proof-of-concept for street space reclamation, and are also eligible to receive a larger mini-grant. Contact us for more information.

Thanks to the enormous success of last year’s 25 Park(ing) Spots, the decision has been made to double the number of spots we’re funding this year to 50! With twice as many Park(ing) Spots, we’re hoping to put them in neighborhoods across the 5 boroughs.

But we need your help! If you know of a person, organization, firm, practice, corporation, or extra-terrestrial that you think would be interested in building a Park(ing) Spot in their neighborhood, let them know! Or, better yet, build one yourself!