A Tree Grows in the Bronx...

A Bronx Tree Honors a Slain Journalist - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog 3. June 19th, 2008 3:09 pm On the other hand, Bette Midler who has since won an award from a Long Island Parks organization, helped stop the city’s auctioning off of community parks, by buying them outright and enlisting others with means to and made them a gift back to the NY community. I recall one in particular across the street from the lot where “Batteries Not Included” was filmed by Mr. Spielburg, which offered some nice shade on a hot day and a pleasant respite, community park activist Adam Purple, a sort of “Johnny Appleseed” would have been proud of in Alphabet City. The lot? It was to become the center for all Housing Police south of 42nd St. and also was to provide apartment housing. Crossing a picket line there and waving to Detective Lennie Briscoe (actor Jerry Orbach) who was in an episode of “Law and Order” I was part of an archaeology team on the lot. Nearby was an important shipyard that became the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture on Long Island. Bette Midler helped found the “New York Restoration Project” of which I am a member, which has opened new parks, one in Harlem. — Posted by George Myers