••• “The Summer Streets program beloved by cyclists and despised by drivers will exasperate even more motorists this year—turning a 60-block radius of lower Manhattan into a ­5-mph zone. The car-crawl zone will be carved out on Aug. 13, the second of three consecutive Saturdays that the Summer Streets ‘celebration’ is held, and drivers will be encouraged to avoid the area ­entirely. The area will extend from Brooklyn Bridge to Battery Park and from Broadway to Water Street, and will feature rock-climbing and a 30-foot high zip line, officials said. The NYPD will man area vehicle-entry points and ‘encourage’ drivers within the zone not to travel more than 5 mph.” Does that mean below Chambers? Typically, the city announced this but hasn’t put any related info on the Summer Streets website. Summer Streets is fun, but having just gotten into yet another fight with a truck driver laying on his horn because traffic is at a standstill, I wish the city would spend its resources (you know this will be expensive to carry out) on making traffic flow better—or better yet, figuring out a way to implement congestion pricing. The seething, honking traffic around here is what will ultimately make me leave. And don’t get me started on non-trucks with air horns (or even worse, the bicyclist I saw the other day blowing one just to let everyone know he was there). —New York Post

••• “The 15th annual River to River Festival, Lower Manhattan’s annual, free summer arts celebration, began yesterday and will continue through Sunday, June 26. The 11 days of live dance, music, theater and visual arts will present more than 80 separate performances and events, spread across dozens of Lower Manhattan venues, to a total audience of more than 70,000 spectators.” —Broadsheet

••• “Marc Forgione uses recipes of his father [Larry Forgione], a farm-to-table pioneer, for a Father’s Day meal” that’ll be served at Marc Forgione “for a week, starting the Monday after Father’s Day.” —Wall Street Journal

••• Downtown Express looks at how Battery Park City uses compactors to cope with garbage. I don’t know if the neighborhood can be held up as a model for other areas, which have street-level businesses to contend with. But garbage is certainly a problem. I used to love walking around in the early morning, and now all the streets just smell like the giant snowbanks of trash.

••• There was a groundbreaking for 45 Park Place. “Several renderings for the project have made their rounds,” says Curbed. “But it seems like the most recent rendering is officially official.” Also: “Soho Properties also owns a neighboring site at 51 Park Place which will give way to a three-story Islamic cultural center designed by starchitect Jean Nouvel. A rep for the project says that a variance allowing the development of a museum is still being sought for the site.”