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NY1 reports:

New York’s annual block party will return this summer with even more Saturday morning activities for participants.

The Department of Transportation will host the Fifth Annual Summer Streets event on August 4, 11 and 18.

The Summer Streets route runs from the Brooklyn Bridge all the way to 72nd Street along Park Avenue and connecting streets. The seven miles of city streets will be blocked off for activities ranging from yoga to dance classes.

DOT officials also fit thousands of people for free bicycle helmets during Summer Streets as part of its Bike Smart program.

“The streets are for everyone and it’s a great way for New Yorkers to get out and enjoy and see the city in a different way and engage in some really fun, healthy, terrific activities,” said DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

One of the highlights this year will likely be a 160-foot zip line at Union Square Park.

On Tuesday morning, the zip line was set up by Fantasy World Entertainment in Union Square for passersby to try out.

“For your first time [it’s scary], after that, you’ll come right back in line,” said Greg Korzeniowski of Fantasy World Entertainment.

“It’s a great idea for a bit of a good rush in the morning, great way to wake you up. I don’t have to have a coffee this morning, I’ve done this,” said one zip line user.

“It was fun. When you jump off, I was a little nervous, but then it was like fun,” said another.

Even NY1’s Roger Clark tried out the zip line. As he stood 30 feet about Union Square, the operators assured him that he would be caught by workers at the end of the 160-feet line.

Clark did have a safe landing, and then wanted to use the zip line again. He wasn’t the only one.

“As soon as I finished I was like, can I go again? I didn’t think he would let me, but he did, so it was fun,” said a zip line user.

From the park association: It’s crunch time in Union Square Park as the North End Project reaches 83 percent and enters into the final stretch. New granite curb has been installed along Union Square East, and crews are hard at work paving the east side and 16th Street transverse. Next, they will install the playground’s south perimeter fence once paving is complete. To recap, at this time the landscaping is finished and the park’s new trees, shrubbery and perennials are taking root. Most of the plazas having been reopened to the public and the Greenmarket is fully operational on site in time for their busy fall season. Pavilion restoration continues, though hampered by graffiti removal that has proven challenging, and the new restroom facility on the east side of the project area is nearing completion.

Click here to see 21 archival photos of Union Square dating back as far as 1888.

From The Villagher:

Union Square Park has new and improved free Wi-Fi. The service can accommodate up to 250 people simultaneously using wireless devices, from laptop computers to iPhones and other P.D.A.’s. Two Altai A8 antennas are situated on rooftops at the park’s north and south ends, providing coverage to users in the park, as well as the surrounding area There’s also a local community portal Web page with event listings and recommendations on places to dine and shop.

Get the complete Union Square Summer in the Square schedule here.

From the NY Times:

Barry Benepe, an urban planner who in 1976 conceived of inviting farmers to truck their ripe tomatoes, peppery arugula and fresh corn to forlorn patches of New York City, delivering bustling markets and excitement to the city along with flavorful and healthy food, died on Wednesday at his home in Saugerties, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 96.

New York’s popular Greenmarkets, the largest farmers’ market network in the country, helped start a national farm-to-table culinary movement. They are credited with saving thousands of acres of farmland in the region from development and reviving urban neighborhoods. Renowned chefs who discovered the bounties of fresh strawberries and zucchini blossoms were soon buying much of their seasonal produce from Greenmarket stalls.

Mr. Benepe (pronounced BEN-eh-pea) raised grant money and worked the city bureaucracy to organize the first market with a colleague, Robert A. Lewis, whose role was to recruit wary farmers. During a decade of high crime and urban decay in New York, farmers feared that whatever money they made would be boosted before they escaped the city.

Instead, the first Greenmarket — which kicked off in Manhattan in the summer of 1976 at East 59th Street and Second Avenue with a handful of upstate growers offering an open-air cornucopia — was an immediate success.

“It could not have been a better location,” between two popular department stores, Mr. Benepe recalled in a 2022 interview with On Hand, a foodie newsletter. “We were halfway between Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s. We were in the passage between the two, so you had to stop.”

By contrast, the Union Square market — today the rock star of Greenmarkets — did not have a promising start. It opened later that year, but for weeks nobody came to visit the farmers who had set up in a park strewn with litter and known for drug sales. Mr. Benepe personally watered crab apple trees on the site.

The market went on to anchor a neighborhood rebirth that included Danny Meyer’s Union Square Café and a multiyear improvement plan by the Parks Department.

“We both loved the idea of the city benefiting from the revival of a European kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Lewis, whom Mr. Benepe hired in 1975 for his one-man planning firm, said in an interview. “He’d spent so much time in France and England. The daily shopping at the market. The fresh bread — this is Barry, a romantic.”