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On-site manager, Matthew Conley at the Timeshare Backyard on August 9. Amal Chen/The Epoch Times
NEW YORK—In between lofty residential apartments and a crêperie, lays a meadow-green backyard, available to rent by the hour on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
For $100 an hour the private backyard provides a BBQ grill, picnic benches, coolers, squirt guns, and hula hoops. It’s just like an ordinary backyard, for the most part, except the walls are decorated with graffiti from international street artists.
The yard, which can hold 30 people at once, will hold a free yoga class this Friday.
Co-founder of Timeshare Backyard Jessica Resler said the idea was born more than a year ago, when a business consultancy staffer asked rhetorically, “Wouldn’t it be funny if people could rent backyards for cookouts in Manhattan?”
The Participating Agency, a New York-based business consulting agency, now organizes the backyard each summer for promotional purposes. This is their second summer doing it.
Next summer this backyard will not be up for rent because construction on a new home will begin in the space. Misrahi Realty, the real estate company that leases the lot, plans to provide other options in nearby locations.
The Timeshare Backyard will be open until Aug. 31. Rentals end Aug. 26.
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