The sailors' half of the Carroll Park WWI memorial
On display outside 75 and 77 State Street in Brooklyn is a collection of punnily named footwear-based flower planters made from discarded objects. (Others include a rollerblade with a piece of wood: "Skate Board"; a sneaker with a small adding machine printer: "Foot Print"; and a pair of boots with a laptop: "Re-boot".) They're the work of Nat Hendricks, the buildings' owner. Nat told me that, much to his dismay, some Type A New Yorkers keep coming by and tying all the shoelaces.
He's talking with Sherry the human and Saturday the dog, having just fetched that water and Coke for me. His block was voted the greenest commercial block in Brooklyn in 2007 and 2010, and is a semifinalist in the 2012 competition; you can see why (and you can also see the shoe planters on the doors and walls).
Part of this multi-gate message (and not related to the artwork in the previous photo, as far as I know)
This now mostly vacant building was, until 2006, the headquarters of the Transit Authority. It was here, beneath street level, that the mysterious money trains would drop off the cash they had collected from token booths throughout the subway system.
This map, mounted on the side of the Transportation Building, lists every transportation worker who served in the war, with stars showing the locations where 24 of them died.
The building in the center, behind the giant blue thingies, is currently owned by NYU-Poly (and known as the Wunsch Building), but it once housed what is now the oldest continuing black congregation in Brooklyn, and was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Leading to the same house, the doors are labeled "Foul Weather" and "Fair Weather".
Unlike some of its longer-lasting comrades, this mezuzah looks to have survived only one or two new coats of paint before being removed. I used to live in an apartment with a rounded, elongated bump on the doorpost — a mezuzah buried under about a dozen tenants' worth of repaintings.
I like to imagine her serving as a coat rack the rest of the year.
The jellyfish has firmly established itself in the city's industrial ecosystem.
Damn! On a hot day like today, I could have really gone for some lemenad.
A tone so deep and so pleasant (at least it once was — the bell is now just street-level eye candy)
Honoring the first US citizen to achieve sainthood (not to be confused with the first native-born American saint, whom we've indirectly encountered on two previous occasions)
That was the question posed to the children who attend Red Hook Playgroup. Their ridiculously cute answers are posted all over this street-facing window. Sylvie came up with another instant classic; her response begins: "That all my friends maybe love me".
IKEA wanted to put a store in Red Hook on the site of an old shipyard; as part of the deal, they had to build a park to preserve some of the area's history and provide public access to the waterfront. The sprawling park is quite beautiful, and incorporates many shipyard relics, including the massive crane you see here. I do have one complaint, though...
Now boarding: the all-important rack of snack-size Frito-Lay products
These cars are owned by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, an organization run by Bob Diamond (of Atlantic Avenue Tunnel fame) that hopes to re-establish trolley service in Brooklyn. They've struggled for more than a decade to obtain city approval for the project, and at one point were even laying tracks in the street, but all that now remains of their efforts are these three rusting trolley cars sitting behind the Fairway supermarket in Red Hook.
Manhattan's 34th Street Partnership BID may have outgrown these dinged-up old planters, but Red Hook isn't too proud to put them to good use. You can find quite a few of them livening up the waterfront around here.
