Activity 6

Carmen Lam
Activity 6

Today is the first day of spring and i decided to enjoy the beautiful weather by walking around my neighborhood. I was walking around 60th street and 5th avenue in Brooklyn. Walking around 5th avenue i did not see any children day care. But I found a day care that is between 4th and 5th avenue on 58th street. The day care is located in a basement of a private house. There is a public elementary on 4th ave and 60th street I assume that there is a after school program taken place inside the elementary school because around 5:30 pm i see parents entering the school to pick up their children. When i continue walking toward 2nd avenue and 55th street I saw a Lutheran hospital and across the street from the hospital is a small public park. I observed that the basketball and handball courts are "male" spaces and by the swings and the water fountain is "female" space. The basketball and handball courts is "male" space because it is a spot where men are competitive and aggressive in that particular sport. By the fountain and the swings i saw only a couple of young girls that appeared to be watching over their children, it is interesting to see that when a female goes to a park she has a responsibility to watch over her child and for guys a park is a place for them to relax and hang out with their group of male friends. I continued walking toward 5th ave and there are many stores that only target female shoppers. Stores like pretty girl, rainbow, baby blue, etc and stores that are for male and female shoppers are the sneakers stores. The nail and hair salon are unisex and resturants had an equal amount of male and female customers.
I don't see any particular places in my neighborhood that appeared to be queer/gay spaces. I see queer/gay individual claiming space in Chelsea piers.I believe that the queer/gay people pick Chelsea piers is because there are many trendy bars/clubs and upscale restaurants that queer/gay people can act freely without any discrimination on sexuality. I always heard that Chelsea piers is full of queer/ gay people but i never met one personally. I believe that queer/gay people feel more comfortable and able to act more freely about their homosexuality, because the queer/gay people assume that visitors that come to Chelsea piers already expect queer/gay people. When i researched for "gay map of new york" a lot of restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, and saunas for "gays" and "lesbians". In my neighborhood, about one block away from my house there is a nursing program. Everytime when i pass by the nursing program i always see a group of female in their scrub uniform smoking marijuana literally next to the nursing program entrance. Its funny to see that everytime when i pass by the nursing program entrance i only see females smoking but I never saw any male nurse smoking by the entrance.