New GAP Coming to Park Slope?

Erica, in her new incarnation as organized madam of now TWO blogs, shot her unstaff an email yesterday asking if any of us wanted to do a post about the new plan for the GAP in Park Slope.

Hallelujah!

Finally, an affordable place to buy clothes that doesn’t entail my spending another moment at the dreaded Atlantic Center.

Me, me, me, me, me! Choose me, Erica. I wanna write it.

Only, to my everlasting dismay, it wasn’t a Gap of any kind coming to a boarded up storefront near me. No. It was a redesign for GAP as in Grand Army Plaza, that harrowing death trap that I find it hard to believe any redesign is likely to fix.

Yawn.

Oh well.

Knew it was too good to be true.

Okay, soooooooo… the redesign of Grand Army Plaza.

I admit that I’m not a genius at reading plans and I’ve now spent several minutes staring at these two drawings from Brownstoner without actually getting how anything’s going to actually change to, say, synchronize those lights so I can actually get to the library from the park side without sprinting, frantically screaming to little people, “run, dammit, run like the wind.” Or end up a sitting duck with 20 other schmoes stuck in the median. And my other pet peeve: the “Kojak bang bang” moves you have to make to get a car from Flatbush coming toward the city over to PPW. And, yes,  I did just quote Foul Play, which I'll have you know is a seminal piece of filmmaking.

So, is that shit getting fixed? Fuck if I know. But you all can go to town figuring it out.

When I asked the husband, he had this to say, "wow. shit. okay. hmmm. i think it will make it better but I can't see how that crossover to the library will work. Looks like the median is still in the middle and the picture doesn't seem to show whether you'll still have to cross several lanes of oncoming traffic to get from Flatbush to PPW." He also said that the bike lane looked death-defying coming out of the park. But, all in all, better.

Well, that's as clear as mud.

By the way, the comments are pretty good over at Brownstoner.

“I almost kill myself every time I drive around that thing, probably because I haven't been doing it for 30 years. It's insane design, and it only works if you've either driven it for 30 years or you've spent a couple hours studying a map plus satellite imagery before entering the circle.”
By bkrules May 3, 2010 1:58 PM

“This may foil my plan. I was going to collect all of the parts left over from accidents, then weld them together to build a mini arch.”
By whynot on May 3, 2010 11:16 PM

I expect no less from you people. Do me proud…