This ramp, located at the edge of New York City in southeast Queens, and providing access to the NYC Water Trail, is part of the Idlewild Park Preserve, which comprises over 200 acres of Jamaica Bay wetlands. The land you see just across the creek is Nassau County.
This preserve is named for Idlewild Airport, which itself was named for the Idlewild Golf Course it replaced. In late 1963, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Idlewild Airport was renamed in his honor. Looking out over the marsh here, you can see the JFK air traffic control tower, and a plane that just took off, in the background.
North Woodmere in Nassau County is located just across Hook Creek from Rosedale, Queens.
That's what you get when you multiply one of these intersecting street numbers by the other. As I learned from walking around with Moses Gates, this is the highest such product in the city. Thanks to Queens's confusing numbering system, there are actually three different intersections with this product (all within a few hundred yards of each other): 262nd Place and 149th Road, 262nd Street and 149th Road, and 262nd Street and 149th Avenue.
Dismemberment seems to have become part of his modus operandi ever since he arrived on the scene in NYC. I think it's high time we started pressuring Ray Kelly and the NYPD to step up their hunt for this depraved criminal. How many grisly murders will it take before they get serious about this guy? Toys are humans too, Ray!
I couldn't tell if the tree had swallowed the entire bottle or just the bottom of it.
That crumbling wall marks the boundary between NYC and South Valley Stream.
There's a certain largest retailer in the world that has, so far, been unable to break into the NYC market. They've made a couple pushes to open stores in the city, but both attempts were met with vehement community opposition. I always assumed they had some locations elsewhere in the metro area, but what I didn't realize, and what I discovered today after peering through a fence at the end of a dead-end street in Rosedale, is that...
...one of them essentially borders NYC! Unwanted by the city, they've sidled up about as close as you can get — this store in South Valley Stream is located less than 100 feet from the Queens/Nassau boundary (which is marked by the fence and razor wire). A classic case of "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you".
This is also the store where an employee was trampled to death on Black Friday a few years ago, and it seems to be generally beloved by its customers.
And here we have another couple of fowl who seem bizarrely enthusiastic about their impending deaths.
I didn't spend the night over at Cherry Tree Trixie's house — honest!
Named for the nearby Sunrise Highway, this playground boasts a number of sun-related features, including the sunfish you see pictured, and you can find the following nuggets of solar wisdom inscribed in the ground:
- A day without laughter is a day without sunshine
- Make haste while the sun shines
- Light travels 93 million miles from the sun to the earth in 8 minutes
- Look for the silver lining and find the sunny side of life
- No sun without a shadow
- Nobody can be in good health without fresh air, sunshine and good water
- The sun is 5 billion years old, and will shine for another 5 billion years
- The sun loses nothing by shining on a puddle
- Again the sun! Anew each day and new and new and new, that comes into and steadies my soul
- The sunrise has not failed us yet
I've come across quite a few sets of these Hindu prayer flags on my journey so far.
