Did you know? Asian Longhorned Beetles were first discovered in the US in McCarren Park. The beetle was first detected in the Greenpoint / Williamsburg (depending on who you ask) park in 1996. The NY Daily News reports that the federal government plans to spend $23 million fighting the elusive insects, which have dwelled in local trees for years.
Representative Anthony Weiner said, “We saw a clear pattern – less money and more beetles. This funding boost will go a long way to ensuring that trees will still grow in all five boroughs.”
There’s something addictive about walking over the Williamsburg Bridge. There must be, as every day, so many of your fellow neighborhoodies walk the 1.4-mile walk, a hundred feet in the air. The industrial latticework of red fading into Pepto Bismol may not be one of architecture’s greatest aesthetic accomplishments, but its quirkiness makes for a fitting and functional connection between Williamsburg’s laid-back land of artists and the bustling downtown resources of lower Manhattan. It’s also grounding and refreshingly tactical, an optimal place for clearing/organizing your mind.