A beautiful weekend in August

Saturday morning began with a great trip down the entire length of New York's 'Summer Streets' program, where an 100-block stretch of New York's streets are closed to vehicle traffic on three Saturdays in August.
From Park Avenue down Lafayette Street and further south to the Brooklyn Bridge, the streets were filled with public art, aerobics & yoga classes, a bike decorating party, street painting, cyclists, runners, rollerbladers, and those just taking a leisurely stroll--- everything but cars!

We had access to areas now seldom seen (outside of a windshield) in New York City, like this bridge in front of the Grand Central Terminal. With no pedestrian access to much of the area that surrounds this now obscured beauty it is rare that anyone gets to stop and gaze at this magnificent structure.

From my experiences of riding on busy bike paths, I'd say rollerbladers can be considered the SUV's of human powered vehicles (because of the sometimes dangerous way they flail their arms and legs on narrow paths--- no offense to rollerbladers!), but this pack of what seemed like over one hundred rollerbladers was a welcome sight to see on Lafayette Street and I'd take these guys over an SUV any day!
After getting downtown, we made a quick stop to check out David Byrne's exhibit, 'Playing the Building,' at the Battery Maritime Building. Each key on this organ creates a different sound made by the building, the building's pipes, and all sorts of other odd noise makers throughout this old terminal. We had the whole place to ourselves and this group from Canada really took the opportunity to 'play the building!'

The last entirely unique moment of the weekend came on Sunday afternoon as our group on Tour C pedaled across Madison Avenue. This plastic casing for electrical and cable wires stretched for over 10 blocks and made the street completely impassible. In all my biking in New York, Ive never seen such a thing. Ive seen them lay similar things a block or two at a time, but never something so big all at once. The plastic casing seemed to come alive as it snaked up Madison Avenue from Midtown to the Upper East Side!