Old-school New Yorkers are the kind of presumptuous folks who set up folding chairs and collapsible camping seats on sidewalks for neighborhood fireside-style chats, in effect creating public space where there isn't any, formally speaking. Atlantic Cities' Sarah Goodyear recalls living in Astoria when her older neighbors ruled the block from their movable roosts (which they would leave on the street, burglars be damned), and welcomes the advent of an online tool that aims to document the various places across New York City where sidewalk seating is available. Street Seats is the brainchild of The Street Plans Collaborative, an urban planning and design firm, which aims to maintain a database of these free outdoor bum-planting locales (in both map and photo gallery forms), all while asking people to submit photos of ones they spot, too. While many of the shots are of benches outside coffee shops and the like (that is, intentional rather than wonderful urban happenstance), others are creatively accidental.
· Official site [www.streetseats.org]
· An Ode to New York's Glorious DIY Sidewalk Seating Culture [AC]
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