They're ditching their walkers — for handcuffs.
Little old ladies on the Upper East Side have been relishing the rush of being arrested and carted off in a police van for protesting a garbage-transfer station under construction in their neighborhood.
Feisty, gray-haired grandmas have rallied 28 times in the middle of York Avenue to protest the planned East 91st Street Marine Waste Transfer Station, slated to open in 2016.
Although they appear meek and fragile, the protesters have screamed and yelled against the project until cops have hauled them off for civil disobedience.
"We're jailbirds of the same feather," a frail Arlene Brown, 80, said, with her arm around her pal Lindy Linder, 67, with whom she shared a cell in the 19th Precinct station house for five hours earlier this month.
"They asked me if I wanted to be cuffed to a chair or wait in a cell. I choose the cell.
"I may look sweet, but I'm really a bulldog."
The criminally cute duo was arrested for stopping traffic outside of the Asphalt Green sports complex on Aug. 7, when workers were cutting down a peach tree down to make way for a garbage-truck ramp to the East River.
The ramp was being built over the complex's outdoor soccer fields.
Protesters gather near the site of the planned East 91st Street Marine Waste Transfer Station.Photo: Gregory P. Mango
"It was painful," Linder said of being forced to sit on her cuffed hands in the back of a police van.
"We've never been arrested before."
Brown and Linder were issued summonses by the NYPD and must appear in Criminal Court in October.
"They think I'm crazy," Brown said.
"I've been to almost all of [the rallies]. But there are 34,000 kids that come here to play."
Some were less energized by their experience with the criminal system.
"It was a bit scary," said Barbara Heyman, 80, who had also never been busted.
Ricki Spinner, 67, who has been slapped with a summons but keeps coming back, said it's worth it.
Her grown children still have nightmares about the stink and rats from the garbage station that operated at the site until it was closed in 1999, she said, noting that her grandkids now live in the area.
"This is what we fight for," she said, waving a photo on her smartphone of her three grandchildren.
"Us grandmas shouldn't be out here protecting our grandchildren."
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