When Harry met Sally, they drove from their college campus in Chicago all the way to New York City, pulling up right next to Washington Square Park.<\/p>\n
Harry got out, baseball bat in one hand, duffel bag in the other, and walked through the Washington Arch as the camera panned out to show the monument in its sunlit majesty.<\/p>\n
But what if his grand entrance to New York City had a gate standing in the way?<\/p>\n
That question is at the center of debate for Manhattan\u2019s Community Board 2, which is weighing whether permanent gates should be installed and shut at midnight at nine entry points around the park, which has a curfew from midnight to 6 a.m.<\/p>\n
Currently, police barricades are dragged in front of the entrances each night and cleared away in the morning. Community board members say that the amount of trash left in the park overnight suggests that the curfew is often ignored.<\/p>\n
Rich Caccappolo, the chair of the community board\u2019s Parks and Waterfront Committee, said there was \u201cno push\u201d by the board to put up gates. The committee had a public discussion about the idea Wednesday night during a community meeting at New York University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little bit impatient with some of the discussion,\u201d said Brian Meister, 78, a neighborhood resident who brought large-scale photos that he had taken of the park to emphasize his point. \u201cI think the message that those gates would send is, \u2018This park is to be respected.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A possible plan for permanent gates was first reported by The Daily News<\/a>. The board committee on Wednesday voted to ask the Parks Department about options for replacing the barricades. A spokeswoman for the department said no plan is under consideration at the moment. According to the spokeswoman, the park had gates from the 1820s to the 1870s, when Fifth Avenue ran through the park.<\/p>\n The Parks Department abandoned a similar plan in 2005<\/a>, after residents of Greenwich Village, where the park is situated, objected on the grounds that gates went against the park\u2019s spirit of openness. Similar concerns were brought up in public comments at Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n Marelle Myers, 36, an artist from Woodside, Queens, said that many parks in Europe were open to the public at all hours.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s permanent infrastructure development to the park that will affect future generations,\u201d she said, her voice breaking as she spoke into a microphone. \u201cIt\u2019s emotional, because I\u2019m tired of seeing this in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday afternoon, sunshine drew groups of young people to lounge on the park\u2019s green space while people played chess nearby and sat on benches reading. Barricades could be seen, many still chained to the iron fence that surrounds the park but does not block its entry points. Barricades were bunched together in groups around the arch, waiting to be dragged into service that night.<\/p>\n The park is also known as the site of deadly drug activity<\/a> as well as a source of noise complaints and sporadic unrest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Peter Pirone, 22, a student at N.Y.U., sat just inside the park\u2019s northeast entrance on Thursday, his laptop open on the bench next to him. He said that he had received a $100 ticket for hopping the fence to cross through the park at night on his way home after a night out.<\/p>\n Mr. Pirone said he did not understand why the park was closed at night and did not think gates were a good idea.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of homeless people stay in the park,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a home to them. A permanent barrier would keep them out while they\u2019re going through a hard time.\u201d<\/p>\n Ali Abidi, 23, who lives on the Upper West Side and was enjoying lunch on a bench on Thursday, said he had often been disappointed to come across the park at night and see that it was closed. He said he understood the security concerns but favored a different solution.<\/p>\n \u201cI would rather there be some sort of security that keeps it clean,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should be able to use it whenever we want.\u201d<\/p>\n Ed Shanahan, Samantha Latson and Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Harry met Sally, they drove from their college campus in Chicago all the way to New York…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":783584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,320524,312583,311895,405,403,125695,5226,5225,5228,5227,98074,98075,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,320525,320526],"class_list":["post-783583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-curfews","tag-greenwich-village-manhattan","tag-homeless-persons","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-daily-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-parks-and-other-recreation-areas","tag-parks-and-recreation-department-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-square-park-manhattan","tag-when-harry-met-sally-movie"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116542962894143861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}