Road Runners Battle Obesity, Build Esteem
With the sun hoisted high over Icahn stadium May 15, nearly 2,000 kids from the five boroughs descended onto Randall’s Island for The New York Road Runners Youth Jamboree day.
“It’s all about the kids,” said Mary Wittenberg, the club’s president and CEO—and she wasn’t kidding.
Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the city. More children are plagued with inertia as they sit and play mindless video games all day instead of exercising. Not the altruistic youths of the Road Runners though. They ran, cheered and participated in the free-event for children between the ages of 4 and 15.
Turf War
New York City’s smaller islands offer a bit of a headache. For every Rikers Island or Hart Island, which fulfill their functions ably—the city’s prison and potter’s fields, respectively—there is an Ellis Island, which provoked a legal dispute between New York and New Jersey that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Or a Governors Island, which nobody seems to know how best to utilize. Or a Randall’s Island, which, despite all of its advantages, is mostly known for controversy these days. Read more
RANDALL’S ISLAND QUIETLY TRANSFORMS
The controversy over the future of Randall’s Island is not over yet.
Last fall, the often forgotten patch of turf at the confluence of the East and Harlem Rivers fell briefly under the public spotlight when a proposed deal would have given independent schools priority in using new playing fields in return for $45 million toward construction and maintenance costs. That agreement set newspaper columnists and community activists atwitter with indignation, but the outcry died out after Read more
