After Resignation, Adrian Benepe Celebrates Central Park Anthology at the Strand

by Mayara Guimaraes A Central Park celebration took place yesterday at the Strand Bookstore, with Adrian Benepe, who announced his resignation as the city's long time Parks Commissioner this Monday, opening a reading event where the contributors to the book Central Park: An Anthology commented on their experiences with the park and read their essays. Benepe, who also wrote an introduction for the book, said that "The Park," as he refers to it, is in the DNA of New Yorkers. "If someone says to you 'I Love the Park', you know which park they are talking about," said Benepe. But Benepe also recalled the Central Park of a few decades ago, when it was seen as being unsafe and a nigh time stroll through the park was out of the question. While the Park has been cleaned up immensely since then, the Anthology, edited by Andrew Blauner, celebrates both the old and new Central Park. The contributors for the book include Thomas Beller, Ben Bolnick, John Burnham Schwartz, and Susan Sheehan, all of whom where at the reading yesterday. The Park is perhaps best summed up by Beller in his work, "Negative Space,": "But such is the glory of Central Park and its many nooks and crannies that any given moment it holds thousands of people who feel like they are alone."