City Council Panel Tackles Recreation and Hip Hop

By LA QUINTA CLARK

The City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation voted on Thursday to lower annual membership fees for youth, veterans, seniors and persons with disability at Parks Department recreation centers.

“The bill had not been watered down,” said Chairman Mark Levine. “It had become better and stronger,” than the last time the committee reviewed it months ago.

The current annual membership fee of roughly $150 would be reduced by 80 percent when and if the bill is passed and signed into law.

Sara Fisher, co-founder of Friends of Inwood Hill Park, proposed that they also include a reduction in tennis court fees, making it possible for all to gain access to the courts throughout the city. Levine acknowledged the inclusion to the proposal, but informed it will be considered at a later date.

Fisher said the bill makes sense but added, “I would like to see it amended, at some point, to give the same sort of consideration to access tennis courts.”

In other news, the committee unanimously voted to name parts of Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx “Hip Hop Boulevard.”

Jacob Morris, the director of The NYC Freedom Trail, proposed the name indicating the emphasis of Hip Hop that originated in the Bronx. When coming up with the new name, he thought of significant figures like DJ Kool Herc and Gil Scot Heron in the early 1970s.

Morris frames Sedgwick Avenue as the “crystallization” of hip hop. “This was the crystalizing moment when all of these elements were in the pot and getting stirred, he said. Aside from the Bronx sound, Caribbean sounds influenced hip hop as well.” When asked how excited he was about the approval of the new name, he smiled and said, “I am over the moon.”