RE: Online expert, enliven your park/gardens with campfires or community brickovens, now

H* A*

Hey,

I like a little barbecue as much as anybody on the Fourth of July - not as
much as I used to, because I am ( much to my surprise)  a vegetarian these
days. However, more and more urban public parks have ordinances against bon
fires and open air grilling because of insurance/liablility issues. All it
takes is one or two pyros to do an amazing amount of park damage.

In NYC, where we are having a rally today at noon on the steps of City Hall
to try to get  funding for Parks to 1% ( We have a slogan "One Percent for
Parks") from the horendous .5% currently budgeted. Imagine if we had to deal
with forest fires in large Frederick Law Olmstead designed spaces with old
growth trees like Central Park &  Prospect Park? Boggles the mind.

This lady has a gimmick, and maybe gathering around a bonfire creates social
cohesion in Toronto ( though even there I imagine it's value may be
overstated.)

All things being equal in NYC, our dear mayor may decide to use the bon fire
as a place to discard disapproved artworks, books, etc.

Adam Honigman 

-----Original Message-----
From: Harriet Festing [h*@pps.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 4:33 PM
To: community_garden@mallorn.com
Subject: [cg] Online expert, enliven your park/gardens with campfires or
community brickovens, now

Grassroots leader - Jutta Mason - will advocate the benefits of fires in
parks as she takes up the role of online expert and conference speaker in
New York this summer.

Author of Cooking with Fire in Public Space, Mason is the guest of Project
for Public Spaces, the New York-based nonprofit.  Her contribution is
two-fold: in June she will join 'Ask the Expert' to share her knowledge and
ideas with park enthusiasts on the PPS website, Urban Parks Online
(http://urbanparks.pps.org).  In July she will be guest speaker at their
conference, Great Parks, Great Cities.

Mason began cooking over campfires in 1993 with a group of young "regulars"
at Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto.  Two years later, they built a wood-fired
bread oven, which became so popular that another was added in 2000. The
program has dramatically transformed the usage and sociability of the park.

***********************************************************************8
Urban Parks Online is the premier resource for park enthusiasts across the
US, thanks to a $150,000 grant from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds.
The aim is to get 10,000 members signed up to the site by 2005.

The Great Parks, Great Cities conference will be held in New York City,
July 28 -31, 2001.

The winners of the Great Parks, Great Cities 2001 Award will be announced at
the conference.  The awards are being initiated by Project for Public Spaces
to acknowledge that an attractive, active, well-functioning public space can
jumpstart the comeback of a community - from a small suburban or rural town
to a highly urbanized city

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