What? Give me a reason to believe business was slowed, or that business owners even feel it was. That's quite an assumption to start out with. Anyway I don't see why you're so concerned about winning and losing. This is a closing of a tiny portion of NYC's streets a few Sundays out of the year. We all "win" with summer streets, or at least have the opportunity to. You can count yourself a winner every other day of the year, or on any other street on those Sundays, if that is how you insist on looking at things.

...

omg forman u r kidding right? Revving engines and loud radios in the city are enjoyed by one person (the driver) out of the ten thousand people that are forced to listen to them. Announcing your glorious presence to the neighborhood with an amplifier and an unproductively combusting engine is the thing that is quite pompous. (pompous -> pomp -> "ceremony or splendid display")

your evaluation seems quite pompous. some people enjoy revving of engines and the loud radios.

all adds to our diverse culture.

The few people I saw seated in the shade on a hot sunny day did not seem to warrant the shutting down what would normally be a busy street. If the businesses feel this impedes their business they have a right to kill this. Retail rental costs are extremely high and its very unfair of residents to burden retailers in this economic environment.

So give em a reason to love this. Make them think this was the greatest idea since sliced bread. Then you win.

I second the idea that sales volume on the streets should be at least a secondary measure of success, and I expect those results will be unambiguously positive. (This past Sunday more businesses seemed to have caught on and moved a bit out into the sidewalk, selling cold things or just showing their faces.)

I will say this: I was out there for over 4 hours+ shooting video, talking to folks and hanging out. I felt like my skin was melting and even though I drank 8 bottles of water when I got home I was obviously dehydrated. When I was riding over I expected a ghost town with scorching heat like that. So the fact that so many people were out in the streets was great. AND the streets were QUIET since there was no honking, no loud trucks (not many have mentioned that as a benefit) and the air was CLEANER.

I think the weather is supposed to be great Saturday. And it will be the second event, I am sure there will be many more folks out.

Perhaps a Fall rollout when the streets are cooler could bring this into a better light and not let people dismiss the event as easily as they are right now.

And in years past, the congestion on the street with 20 cars would have been used as justification for removing stoops, narrowing sidewalks, and expanding the roadbed!

We'll see what happens on Park Ave between little kids and people on bikes.

Bedford Avenue is a residential and retail corridor comparable to Prince Street in that it draws visitors to the area, and the sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate the high pedestrian traffic. There are also lots of street vendors. Yet I didn't see any of the following plagues that were predicted if Prince Street were closed to traffic:

-a row of unregulated vendors down the middle of the street
-noisy street performers entertaining tourists
-food vendors
-jugglers and mimes
-honking drivers
-traffic congestion and pollution
-accidents between pedestrians and cyclists
-anything even closely resembling the Santa Monica Boardwalk or the San Gennaro Festival.

(http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/03/07/soho-partnership-dot-propose-car-free-sundays-on-prince-st/)

You could do this exact same treatment on Prince Street and get the same results - a pleasant space to walk and gather without cars.

These things aren't new in New York. Millions of city kids have been able to enjoy a stickball game or a game of basketball on the streets for years.

Maybe critics would be satisfied if that little boy were wrapped in several tons of steel...