You gotta have park, even tiny ones. And the next one to hit Chinatown, right next to the bike path for the Manhattan Bridge, looks like it could end up being a good one. We don't know if Chinese artist Xu Bing's design is quite "Chinatown's Mini-Highline," but it should be a nice addition to a grimy corner.
The park, which is shooting for a summer 2014 for completion, will turn the patch of gravel bordered by the Manhattan Bridge, Canal and Forsyth Streets into a modern public plaza, with a new staircase built up to it from an expanded Forsyth. The plan is for a peaceful plaza "ringed by bamboo and weeping cherry trees." Also, it will include Xu's "signature Square Word Calligraphy — which looks like Chinese characters at first glance but is actually composed of English letters" on the steps. They will show the last two lines of "Writings at Helin Temple," a poem by Li She ("By a bamboo temple I talk with a monk midway: / Half a day, in my floating life, is thus whiled away.").
We imagine bikers especially will like having a patch of green at the end of their coast down the bridge into Manhattan.
