My friend and I went to Luz Restaurant in Brooklyn for their Earth Day celebration, as I wrote about here and here.

I have finally gotten around to posting the photo I took of the “lights out” dinner on Earth Day, April 22! You can see this photo above and at my greenbk flicker account.

All-in-all, it was probably one of the best meals I’ve had in ages, and that includes a few nights out at excellent restaurants in NYC that were not organic and certainly not “sin luz”.

Read on for the review…

Tuesday May 6th is Idle-Free Day in NYC!

Press Conference:
Tuesday, May 6th
10am
City Hall Steps
Go here to see the flyer for the press conference.

As we know from the post this week, NYC’s air quality is, well, ahem, sub-par. Okay, it’s horrible. 43% of Brooklynites are at risk of health problems each day because of pollution — most of which is from vehicles’ tailpipes.

Find out more truths about idling and how it harms your health, hurts air quality, wastes fuel, and is against the law!

Join a growing chorus of New Yorkers who are tired of breathing exhaust from idling cars and trucks!

Here are some resources on what you can do if you are: an individual, a school, a community group, a business, or a policy-maker.

Stay tuned at the IFNY website or on the Idle-Free NYC blog.

So our air got WORSE last year? How did that happen? Not good.

According to State of the Air: 2008 — the American Lung Association’s annual report on air quality country-wide — NYC is now the 8th most polluted city in the country in regards to ozone, aka smog.

We are now the 13th most polluted city in the country for short-term particulates, aka soot. Soot!

We used to be the 10th-worst and 17th-worst polluted in those categories respectively, but we seem to have actually gotten worse and not better in the course of 2007.

People at risk from poor air quality in King’s County alone:

Pediatric Asthma: 60,806
Adult Asthma: 156,821
Chronic Bronchitis: 78,575
Emphysema: 33,462
Cardiovascular Disease: 615,491
Diabetes: 141,024

That is over 1 million people who are at risk of poor health every single day due to pollution in King’s County. That is a whopping 43% of the population that is at risk. It deserves the “D” grade that it gets.

Read the report’s key findings to read some pretty shocking stats about the state of the air in this country, but also some positive plans for action on how we can improve our air quality.

Read the whole post, and find out how you can take action, by clicking below…

He was against it before he voted for it. Sounds awfully familiar, right? This, at least, is a flip-flop that makes some sense, unlike John Kerry’s inexplicable comments in the lead-up to the 2004 Presidential election.

City Councilman Kendall Stewart; who represents Flatbush, East Flatbush, Flatlands; opined in a Brooklyn Daily Eagle op-ed this past Tuesday — Earth Day — that based on the evidence presented him, including facts brought to his attention by the Campaign for New York’s Future, he could not and would not oppose congestion pricing.

What a better way to cap off your Earth Day 2008 than to celebrate with a candlelight dinner?! Luz Restaurant (177 Vanderbilt Avenue) is hosting a special two-night celebration of all things green in honor of Earth Day, sin luz — without lights!

UPDATE: Dinner at Luz last night was incredible! Go tonight (4/23) for a candle-lit dinner! The place was immaculate, the service exceptional (some of “are you done yet? I can’t see in the dark!”), the restaurant packed and lively, the food exquisite, the cause even better. And the live Afro-Cuban music set the tone for the night. Stay tuned for a full review, but get there tonight and see… I posted a list of what I had via my cell phone to the new funky GBK TXT (see the box on the sidebar to the left).