By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone
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I took a really fine walk through Somerville this past Sunday…right down the middle of Lower Broadway.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t strolling through traffic, mainly because there wasn’t any traffic. We had the street closed for the latest SomerStreets festival and I was in the parade of people that kicked off the event. A few dozen people joined me, some I knew, others I was meeting for the very first time. One really nice part to it was all the kids underfoot and buzzing around on their bikes. That’s right, kids were playing in the street and I’m happy about it. Like the rest of you, when I was growing up my mother always told me not to play in the street. To be fair, my mother has been right about most everything she ever told me, and she’s generally right about that too. But, as Mayor of the city, I have figured out a way to play in the street every now and then, and it’s a lot fun.
In fact, word seems to have gotten around about all the fun people have been having during SomerStreets. We get more people every time we stage one of these events. That’s the sort of word-of-mouth grassroots popularity you hope for when you put together a program like this, and it speaks to the spirit of the people in this community.
It would be easy for the folks in city government to be cynical and assume that no one will care if we put together an event. Yet every time we have a festival, the people of Somerville remind us just how eager they are to get out and have fun. We had a big crowd for our 4th of July celebration. Then Art Beat packed people into Davis Square. Now we’ve had scores of people enjoying a beautiful day along a closed off portion of Broadway (and then heading over to the nearby Foss Fest, which also proved to be a big hit). That’s just during the month of July. We are not a city that’s content to sit around and do nothing.
That get-up-and-go attitude also happens to be what SomerStreets is designed to foster. We don’t want to be a sleepy bedroom community where the streets roll up in the evenings and on weekends. I often talk about our vision of Somerville as a great place to live, work, play and raise a family. All of those things count when it comes to having a true quality of life. Yet the one item on that list that often gets forgotten is “play.”
First Lady Michelle Obama has been stressing the importance of playing an hour every day as part of her Let’s Move campaign (which is based on our own Shape Up Somerville campaign). And that goes for everyone, not just kids. No matter how old or young you are, you need some play time. For you adults out there, we’re adding 10 miles of bike lanes in the city this year. For the kids, we’ve built or refurbished dozens of parks and playgrounds in recent years.
We’re serious about playtime here in Somerville. I want us to be known as the happiest, healthiest, best looking city in America. Anyone who made it over to Lower Broadway on Sunday got to see that on full display. As for those of you who didn’t make it to the latest SomerStreets event, we’ll have another one coming up soon enough.
And when that happens, I want to see everybody outside playing in the street.
The Virtues of Playing in the Street
*
I took a really fine walk through Somerville this past Sunday…right down the middle of Lower Broadway.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t strolling through traffic, mainly because there wasn’t any traffic. We had the street closed for the latest SomerStreets festival and I was in the parade of people that kicked off the event. A few dozen people joined me, some I knew, others I was meeting for the very first time. One really nice part to it was all the kids underfoot and buzzing around on their bikes. That’s right, kids were playing in the street and I’m happy about it. Like the rest of you, when I was growing up my mother always told me not to play in the street. To be fair, my mother has been right about most everything she ever told me, and she’s generally right about that too. But, as Mayor of the city, I have figured out a way to play in the street every now and then, and it’s a lot fun.
In fact, word seems to have gotten around about all the fun people have been having during SomerStreets. We get more people every time we stage one of these events. That’s the sort of word-of-mouth grassroots popularity you hope for when you put together a program like this, and it speaks to the spirit of the people in this community.
It would be easy for the folks in city government to be cynical and assume that no one will care if we put together an event. Yet every time we have a festival, the people of Somerville remind us just how eager they are to get out and have fun. We had a big crowd for our 4th of July celebration. Then Art Beat packed people into Davis Square. Now we’ve had scores of people enjoying a beautiful day along a closed off portion of Broadway (and then heading over to the nearby Foss Fest, which also proved to be a big hit). That’s just during the month of July. We are not a city that’s content to sit around and do nothing.
That get-up-and-go attitude also happens to be what SomerStreets is designed to foster. We don’t want to be a sleepy bedroom community where the streets roll up in the evenings and on weekends. I often talk about our vision of Somerville as a great place to live, work, play and raise a family. All of those things count when it comes to having a true quality of life. Yet the one item on that list that often gets forgotten is “play.”
First Lady Michelle Obama has been stressing the importance of playing an hour every day as part of her Let’s Move campaign (which is based on our own Shape Up Somerville campaign). And that goes for everyone, not just kids. No matter how old or young you are, you need some play time. For you adults out there, we’re adding 10 miles of bike lanes in the city this year. For the kids, we’ve built or refurbished dozens of parks and playgrounds in recent years.
We’re serious about playtime here in Somerville. I want us to be known as the happiest, healthiest, best looking city in America. Anyone who made it over to Lower Broadway on Sunday got to see that on full display. As for those of you who didn’t make it to the latest SomerStreets event, we’ll have another one coming up soon enough.
And when that happens, I want to see everybody outside playing in the street.