Maria Hernandez Park

On our list of the best activities in New York.

The park was still called Bushwick Park when Maria Hernandez, a bookkeeper who organized block parties and rallied her neighbors against the drug dealers on Starr Street, was shot and killed through her apartment window on August 8, 1989. The city renamed the park for her before the year was out. Today it's Bushwick's largest park and its social center: a farmers market and horchata vendors work the sidewalks, a rainbow-colored playground with a water feature sits on Knickerbocker Avenue, and courts for basketball, handball, and volleyball fill the rest of the 6.87 acres, along with two dog runs off Willoughby Avenue.