I woke up last Saturday morning to the sound of helicopters buzzing around my neighborhood like mosquitoes. Loud, nagging, the sound seeped into the inner sleep and forced me up. I had to be up anyways, I work for Transportation Alternatives and the day was the first of Summer Streets – when a portion of Park Avenue is transformed into a car-free panacea.

I quickly got dressed, up, and out. Turning the corner of Ralph and Patchen I realized that the reason the helicopters were buzzing was located on my block. On my street. In my hood. Cruising down my block I was thwarted in multiple directions because there was police activity.

I mention this halted commute because it is the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish here. Later in the day I was surrounded by everyone from Senator Chuck Schumer cruising by on his bike, to Jeannette Sadik-Khan, the DOT Commissioner that leads the Summer Streets effort, also on her bike, to a family of home school upper west siders, bikers, segway riders, pedestrians of leisure, and running groups all whom came out en masse.

Our streets are not always livable. They are not always the free passage ways we want them to be. We are not always safe. Sometimes, however, we are. And on a day like last weekend when I got to see that there was a sharp line between me and where I wanted to go, looking at an empty street cut off from tape and the scouring of police officers looking for a criminal who shot a cop and the other side, a empty street protected by police officers keeping all who driver motorized vehicles out.

There is a difference. The difference is in the details.

Summer Streets had dance classes, and water hook ups, and places to sit. T.A. put up a makeshift park a’la Park(ing) Day, using a giant loom weaved into a place to cover asphalt. The idea was simple. What if we reimagined our public space, our parking spaces, into places that we can actually live and be at?

I was held back from advancing in the morning but my bike was my friend. I wheeled around a few blocks and found and opening in the chaos. It seems that for one day – and now 3 in the calendar year – a sea of alternatives to cars can now needle their way through the chaos one empty road at a time.

-ibrahim abdul-matin