First Run
The Local: From 5-0 to 311
bittermelon via flickr.
The old dog run in Tompkins Square Park.
On July 22, just a couple of weeks shy of the 20-year anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots, the Parks Department opened a $150,000 dog run, complete with a canine paddling pool, in what was once a refuge for the homeless and all manner of fringe groups.
The inauguration of a sleeker, odorless, more expensive dog run is a fitting bookend to Tompkins Square Park's transition from a lawless swathe of parkland in the freewheeling East Village of the 1980s to the upper middle-class enclave the neighborhood is today.
On Aug. 7, 1988, the police tried, and failed, to enforce a 1 a. read more »
