NYC's First No Weed Smoking Signs Go Up In Midtown Parks

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Call it a sign of the times: the first signs reminding New Yorkers not to smoke weed in public have gone up in three Midtown parks after the state legalized marijuana last week.

The placards were put up this week in Bryant Park, Herald Square Park and Greeley Square Park by the nonprofits that manage the three spaces.

They bear an implicit message: "NO SMOKING of any kind."

The intention is to avoid a return to the parks' bad old days, when marijuana use was rampant and deterred the public from visiting them, according to Dan Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership and executive director of the Bryant Park Corporation.

Biederman, who has been credited with spearheading Bryant Park's turnaround in the 1990s, told Patch he is often introduced as "the guy who took Bryant Park from needle park to Midtown’s pleasuring space."

In fact, he said, hard drugs were never the issue.

"Every entrance of the park had a different group selling marijuana and using it," he said. The same was true to a lesser extent at Herald and Greeley squares in the 1980s, Biederman said.

The new signs aim to remind people of the citywide ban on smoking in parks, which has been in place since 2011. In Biederman's three parks, however, New Yorkers are typically not the ones who violate that rule.

"The biggest offenders are Europeans who are big smokers and don’t know that there’s no smoking allowed," he said.

For more Midtown news, subscribe to the email newsletter from Midtown Patch.

The temporary signs installed this week at the three parks will be replaced by higher-quality versions, Biederman said. The city has not announced any plan to put up similar signs in other public spaces.

"Our existing consolidated rule signs already address that smoking is prohibited," Parks Department spokesperson Crystal Howard said in an email.

Signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last Wednesday, New York's marijuana law makes it immediately legal to smoke pot in public wherever it is legal to smoke a cigarette.

In a unique provision, much of the tax revenue raised from pot sales will be directed toward Black and Latino communities that had been disproportionately affected by criminalization. People with prior convictions for marijuana offenses will get their records expunged.

Dispensaries, where marijuana can be purchased legally, will likely not be allowed to open until 2022.

Know someone who would like to get Midtown news in their inbox? Invite a friend to subscribe to emails from Midtown/Hell's Kitchen Patch.