Us brilliant and beautiful Youth Advocates set out on another day on our way towards making Prospect Park car-free. After so much success last Saturday, we again delivered free iced-tea to make our thirsty supporters happy. With our handy-dandy bicycle cart and a ten-gallon water cooler, we made some Lipton Iced Tea and lugged it over to Grand Army Plaza, where we would spend the whole day greeting park-users and signing post cards.
On our way to our destination, we spoke to Jessie about our upcoming plans for the week, and our final event, which we will be hosting on Monday, September 15, from 4 to 6 p.m. On that day, we will gather with you, Transportation Alternatives members, the rest of Brooklyn and hopefully a celebrity or two, and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to hand-deliver the postcards we've been collecting to Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall. We will be meeting at Cadman Plaza on the corner of Tillary Street and Cadman Plaza East. We are going to finish our campaign with a splash and have lots of fun, so we would really appreciate it if everyone comes and brings their friends to make this a party never to be forgotten!
But back at work, Prospect Park was flooded with people at every corner, especially since it was a Saturday and we were situated near the Farmer's Market on the beautiful clear day. Oswald nicely set up the Iced-Tea stand while Farah and I posted up our sign from last week which read "Free Iced Tea for a Car-Free Park." Dozens of people jumped to see us when they saw the sign and keenly signed postcards as we poured them a nice cool drink, which most of them were very much satisfied with. I met a huge variety of people there at Grand Army Plaza. This included a lot of the members and family members of Transportation Alternatives. I was happy they stopped so that I could find out why they're involved (most of them are members because they love to bike, just like me) and connect with them on our campaign while listening to their ideas on how we should deal with cars, using traffic-calming techniques such as traffic tickets and speed bumps.
Afterwards, a pair of cyclists came up to me for some free iced-tea and asked to sign a postcard. The couple was from Montreal, where they told me all about their dreamy roads, where cars are completely separated from bicycles by a concrete wall, so that the streets are entirely dedicated to cyclists only. Maybe someday we could have that in New York, and if not, I am moving to Canada.
Next, I came across a group of cyclists, or rather, a group of cyclists came across me, and asked me what I was doing. When I told them all about the campaign, they all eagerly wished to sign postcards and support us. I cheered for their support as they signed, poured them some drinks while I waited, and gave them directions to Brighton Beach, by telling them to continue on the Loop Drive until they passed the ducks. Nature signs beats street signs any day.
Soon after, a tall man steered off the Loop Drive to stop and sign a postcard and thank us for what we were doing. He was polite, and in my opinion, highly intelligent, even though he told us he wasn't able to graduate from college because of financial issues. He told us a famous quote from Frederick Douglass, which stated that "Without struggle, there's no…" Then he paused, waiting for one of us to finish, but none of us could. And he said "progress. Without struggle, there's no progress." His words stuck with me, and I was very pleased to have met him. So from now on, if I struggle in life, as well as in our small campaign for a better park in a borough in a city in a great big world, I know it only means there's progress being made.
By the end of the day, I was proud of the amount of postcards that we got signed, and I felt like I was back to working at Mickey D's because of the hundreds of times I had to pour a cup of iced tea for the "customers." After we all said goodbye to a successful day, Oswald, Farah, and I were invited to attend a barbeque with American Society of Media Photographers, aka A.S.M.P. They were extremely nice folks who signed our postcards and treated us to an after-work lunch of some of the most delicious gourmet BBQ foods. We mingled and got to know who they were, while they found out who we were, and exchanged contacts just incase we needed some high-class professional photography for special occasions. It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful day, and I'm excitedly looking forward to our special delivery to Mayor Bloomberg in September.
