All images above photographed on Saturday October 27, 2012.
email to Doug Blonsky, President of the Central Park Conservancy:
dblonsky@centralparknyc.org
October 25, 2012
Dear Mr Blonsky:
I am appealing to you once again to return Belvedere Castle to the Children of New York. Earlier this year the Central Park Conservancy took away this exciting and educational place from the Children of New York to turn it into a gift shop for the CP Conservancy where you sell T-Shirts and coffee mugs and other trinkets. This is shameful and in breach of the contract between the NYC Parks & Recreation and the CPC.
The Central Park Conservancy has turned Belvedere Castle into a cheap and tacky place. Central Park Conservancy employees approach visitors in a pestering manner to take photographs of them which I heard is offered to them for sale when they are trapped inside the Castle.
This sort of behavior only occurred in Central Park by outsiders preying on visitors and now this bothersome practice is being done by CP Conservancy employees and volunteers dressed in official looking apparel with the Central Park Conservancy insignia.
Please do not cheapen the park and please make yourself as transparent as possible during the course of your contract which hopefully will terminate once New Yorkers smarten up.
For now I ask that you get rid of that tacky gift shop and return all the microscopes and other equipment which you destroyed from the Castle. Also remove all your paraphernalia and stop using the park to advertise your organization.
any potential mugger or rapist can now buy a T-shirt and walk around with a couple of free maps and win the confidence of their victims because of this cheap tatic by the CP Conservancy.
Central Park is a place for peaceful relaxation not a place for conducting business.
