Let them eat kale.
That is what the folks who run the temporary park at the Domino Sugar Factory are saying about neighborhood teens after a spate of vandalism at McGolrick Park sparked a conversation about giving kids things to do. The vandalism spree that left walls tagged, benches broken, and a maintenance shed charred has not been solved, but it prompted neighbors to reach out to the youngsters who frequent the Greenpoint park.
When Jim Dellavalle heard about the vandalism, he decided to go meet the teens himself. Dellavalle designed and built the bike track at Havermeyer Park, Williamsburg’s temporary park in a vacant lot that is slated to become part of the Domino condo complex. At McGolrick, he found a crew of teens skateboarding and riding BMX bikes under the watchful eye of a policeman, who was dispatched after the destruction.
“What was missing was education,” Dellavalle said “If the cop got annoyed, he would have given them a ticket, but they would not have learned anything.”
So Dellavalle invited the teens over to his dirt jump course to teach them a thing or two.
None of his guests had helmets or bikes with brakes, so Dellavalle lent them some of both, he said. After letting them ride around on the dirt track, he showed them how the track was constructed and instructed them about how to water the plants in its center.
Then he took the Greenpoint youths to meet the folks from North Brooklyn Farms, who grow crops in the park. Farm organizer Ryan Watson fed the kids kale and showed them how to pick basil.
“They were really engaged in what was happening,” Watson said. “None of them had been to a farm before.”
Neither Watson nor Dellavalle got the teens’ names or numbers, but the two are confident that the group will be back.
The field trip grew out of a meeting at McGolrick called by community leaders in response to the defacement spree. Solutions proposed at the meeting diverged widely, with police promising to maintain a 24-hour presence, Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Greenpoint) proposing to close the park at dusk, and Councilman Steve Levin (D–Williamsburg) pledging to look into installing surveillance cameras, while neighborhood activist Holly Fairall called for increasing teen outreach and expanding neighborhood parkland.
“We are not going to do anything without the support of the community,” Lentol said.
Fairall and Lentol plan to hold another neighborhood meeting sometime in September.
Reach reporter Danielle Furfaro at dfurfaro@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2511. Follow her at twitter.com/DanielleFurfaro.
