We are neighbors advocating for equity and partnership in the DOT’s Canal Open Streets Program.
We ask the DOT & Nialls Fallon of Cervo’s & Canal Street Merchants to work in partnership with us - a coalition of residents, businesses, and local community organizations, in maintaining the charm and existing character of our neighborhood.
Open Streets on Canal is a failed public space.
But we can fix it!
Open Streets is a pandemic-era DOT program that allows bars and restaurants to seat an unlimited amount of outdoor dining seats serving alcohol on 2 blocks of Canal Street in Chinatown, in an area known as “Dimes Square.” 2024 counted 300+ private seats belonging exclusively to bars and restaurants, with none for public . 300 private seats in a public space is a corporate takeover of a program meant to serve a public good.
In 2024 under Nialls Fallon’s mismanagement, Canal Open Streets devolved into an out-of-control open-air bar that ran 7 days a week until 11pm. Impromptu block parties and drunken fights would break out, businesses were unable to recieve their deliveries and trash service, and ambulance drivers were left to move their own barricades during emergency response.
We are asking that 2025 not be the same. Nialls and the DOT don’t have ideas on how to fix the Open Street, but we do! We’ve written the Canal Open Streets Community Working Plan for a fairer and more equitable Open Streets program for all buinesses and residents.
We envision a program where a few operation changes will make the Open Street accessible to eveyone, while enhancing the vibrant dynamic that makes our neighborhood unique!
Have you ever seen an
Open Streets like this Before?
Open Streets Partner businesses fail to comply with basic 2024 Rules. Partner business continues to set up tables and chairs instead of helping an ambulance move barricades - creating unsafe conditions for all who live here and in the LES.
Massive, uncontrollable crowds
Unpermitted gatherings and illegal BBQs are rampant and unchecked
Open Streets invites public intoxication and disrespectful behavior - Vomit in front of a Chinese funeral home
NYPD vehicle weaving around Open Streets Barricades. Per 2024 Open Streets Rules - Partner Businesses are required to move barricades for emergency access
Massive crowds of 500+ people on two blocks of residential Canal Street, every night, 7 days a week
DOT has turned low-income, immigrant Chinatown into a 'Bourbon Street' - creating an unregulated party atmosphere that attracts amplified sound performers, food trucks, and unpermitted block parties drawn to the massive crowds drinking and smoking in the streets
No added services to accomodate hundreds of additional visitors - leading public urination, increased trash, increase in rodents
Open Streets on Canal is well known for its lack of enforcement and oversight. This type of behavior (illegally parked car in the closed off street, open container drinking, blasting music) is typical and recurring.
DOT's Open Streets Programs disrupts local commerce and business - blocking storefronts on Canal St., and forcing already strained public safety and services to work around an unnecessary and unsafe street closure
Open Streets Partner Businesses allow unchecked smoking at their outside tables in violation of the Smoke Free Air Act (SFAA). Residents who live on Canal street are subjected to clouds of cigarette and marijuana smoke outside their windows 7 days a week. Many who live in this low-income part of Chinatown keep their windows open for ventilation during the summer.
On June 2nd, 2024 - an unpermitted block party featuring illegal BBQ, amplified sound, and free white claw took advantage of Open Street's well-known lack of enforcement and rules, drawing crowds of hundreds that filled Canal St. The block party went on for hours, with no police response.
Spraying graffiti and blasting music from illegally parked cars in front of residential buildings occupied by low-income, immigrant families
Hear from Neighbors Who Live Here
“My family has been part of the Manhattan Chinatown community for four generations. I currently live on Hester between Orchard and Ludlow, and have seen the transformation and quite frankly the absolute degradation of the area caused by the open streets on Canal. The photo/video evidence on the Neighbors on Canal website so clearly exposes what is happening on a daily basis. The utter disrespect of some of these new small businesses and their patrons to our neighborhood and to the people who are actually from and who actually live in the area is shameful.”
- Leland, Hester St.
“Noise, trash and garbage trucks every night to the point where I never sleep through the night and can’t focus at work. More importantly my 90 year old neighbor can never sleep and she needs her rest!”
- Robbie, Division St.
“We have people drinking and partying and sometimes really loud music being played outside and there is nothing we can do about it. We were never asked as a neighborhood if we wanted this noise at night, the partying and the drugs it has brought into the neighborhood. I live above the parties and I see it all including the drugs being sold on a regular basis.”
- Anonymous, Canal St.
“Lots of trash in the streets, noisy late at night. I love having less cars around the area but more restrictions are desperately needed.”
- Lauren, Henry St.
“I have personally had to deter bar patrons from urinating on the entrances to apartment buildings in Chinatown because they do not provide enough facilities. Why do community led events like night markets have to provide portable toilets at their own cost while for-profit businesses do not?”
-Alison, [Withheld]
“I watched the more northern areas of LES change when too many liquor licenses were given. It became a nightmare. I am now watching our neighborhood completely change all due to these bars and restaurants being able to just take over a major street in our neighborhood for their private business. We have now invited the circus. It's disgusting that something people wrere happy to support when people weren't allowed inside restaurants, somehow became them being allowed to have a street fair outside our windows every day. This is single-handedly transforming our neighborhood into a tourist party zone, and though much of the damage won't be able to be reversed, it can certainly be helped by putting an end to this "temporary" program. It is so enraging that it's gone on for so long, despite tons of complaints from those that live in and/or care about the neighborhood.”
- Jessica, Essex St.
Driving and accessibility. Canal street it vital to getting to the other side of the LES from chinatown
-Asia, Pike St.
My business/ residence has been here for the last 24 years. By business and life has been harshly impacted through outdoor dining and the blocking of Canal Street. Delivery bikes block our front door and only exit, lines of diners waiting for tables at Cervos block out front door, impatient smokers wait outside smoking while the smoke wafts upstairs permitting my space and the clothes I work with. The nature of my job ( fashion) requires me to load in and out of my space with rolling racks and large duffels of clothing before and after a shoot - but now I cannot have a car pull up directly outside, we are forced to park 2 blocked away and ferry all our equipment through crowds of drinking /smoking young socialites with nothing better to do than party - so entitled they don’t even stand aside to let you through.
The noise has become unbearable at times - absurdly early funerals in the morning( before 8am with 3 obnoxious bands playing simultaneously and mourners congregating and smoking outside my door) and diners and the party crowd screaming drunkenly and loudly at the other end of the day into night. When they finally leave, the trash on the street remains like a festival ground, while they get cars back to Brooklyn, Queens or Uptown. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to get any sleep, to do any early morning or late night zoom calls and it makes sound recording( another part of my work) completely impossible unless from the back of my closet! The trash, bottles, debris is out of control, much like San Genera festival in Little Italy - except every week. Rats are everywhere. It also makes it attractive to a lot of the drug addicts, zombies and homeless who are there every day asking diners for food and money. Sometimes very aggressively.
It’s impossible to call a car outside - even in pouring rain, as the cars are now used to pulling up outside the hotel or are only able to access as near as Essex Street.
Besides Dimes, the restaurant owners are rude, even to residents, and people who have been here a lot longer than they have and who have supported their businesses during the pandemic - in response their prices have gone sky high despite that they have managed to increase their seating, and we are forced to pay these inflated prices, even as locals. When asked why a Matcha/ tea was $9 at Little Canal I was rudely told : It’s the area! As if it was a privilege to visit, when actually we created the “cool factor” and neighborhood feel to this area.
I would love for these restaurants had some empathy for residents and offices and artist studios who have been here long before they have - don’t get me started on the recent outdoor BBQS in the steeet and sidewalks, food smells/ poor extractor fans amd the danger of these old buildings going up in flames due to negligence.
-Anonymous, Canal St.
Noise, filth, overcrowding, vomit, public defecations, etc.
-Anthony, Orchard St.
“The Open Streets Program on Canal St, though a well intentioned response to the pandemic, has turned into a nightmare for actual residents of the neighborhood. The program has ONLY benefited a small handful of bar / restaurant owners, not the people who actually live in the neighborhood. Because of the program Canal Street is an open air free for all from April to November. The Canal Street Open Streets Program is a total failure for families and individuals who make their home in the neighborhood. We should not have to cringe every day at 3pm for seven months when the bar / restaurant owners move the street barricades into place! It is time for the city to modify the program so that the quality of life and safety of the neighborhood's residents are no longer held hostage to the narrow business interests of a small number of non-residents. Open streets for the neighborhood, not for unlimited nightlife!”
-Bruce, Canal Street
“The environments infrastructure was not meant nor designed for the layout. Also rats and roaches have increased since this began.”
- Anonymous, Orchard St.
“Very dirty street and park surroundings”
- Julie, Essex St.
It's obvious these businesses are taking advantage of these rules and are profiting off of public space. It is a disruption to the neighborhood and should be reigned in so that this section of Manhattan can be shared and appreciated by all.
-Alex, Grand St.
Join Us in Organizing
加入我们组织
✅ FOR reasonable operating hours determined by people who actually live here
✅ FOR an Open Streets that is inclusive for ALL neighbors, not just those who can afford to sit at an outdoor dining table
✅ FOR Equity and Community Input for ALL businesses and residents
✅ FOR Accountablility for Open Streets partner businesses
❌ AGAINST a Carnival-like atmosphere, until 10pm every night, 7 days a week
❌ AGAINST More Policing by restaurant private security and overuse of city resources like NYPD and DOT staff
❌ AGAINST Displacement & Accelerated Gentrification in Chinatown
❌ AGAINST a Complete Handover of our public spaces to the restaurant industry