These Austin FX4s are "from the movies", according to the mechanic at work in this used-car lot
Looks like some sort of Rollinator. Note the empty rum bottle leaning against the curb by the driver's seat (close-up).
This survey marker (located a few hundred feet from the Northeast Corridor right-of-way) must have been installed in the late 1970s, when the federal government authorized the overhaul of our nation's busiest passenger rail line.
There's an ancient family cemetery sitting right in the middle of a block of apartment buildings in Woodside, Queens. The 51st Street side, where I took this photo, offers few suggestions that it's anything other than an overgrown vacant lot: there are a couple of small signs at ground level stating that it's a cemetery and asking people to pick up after their dogs, and there's this one odd little memorial for a person who died in 2009 staked into the ground, possibly an unauthorized addition to the burial ground, where no one has been interred since the 1860s.
As hinted by the building itself, this was once part of the New York and Queens County Railway Company's main depot and trolley barn. Most of the complex is now gone, and this two-towered structure was set to be demolished when the shopping center was built, but local residents supposedly formed a human chain around it to prevent the bulldozers from advancing, saving it from destruction and ensuring its continued survival, albeit as a Pizza Hut. There is, however, at least one other remnant of the former transit hub still hanging around, as we learned when we crossed paths with it a few months ago down at the other end of the block.
That's a George Benson album (Breezin', I believe) in the eight-track player.
Things look a bit more cemetery-like here on the 54th Street side.
This place looked much lovelier back in May of 2009.
We've seen some spirited call boxes in the past, but this one takes the cake.
UPDATE: It's the work of this guy.
Commemorating area residents who served in World War I, this statue stands in Doughboy Park, the "mustering ground" where local soldiers used to gather before being shipped overseas during the war.
The park in which this playground resides is named for Louis Windmuller, "the noblest walker of them all", who had "no sympathy whatsoever for the healthy individual who prefers riding on horseback, in automobile or buggy, or on rapid transit trains, to peripatetics." He established "the most exclusive, distinguished, and enthusiastic walking club in America" and his thoughts on perambulation included the following: "A good rule to make your tramp a really enjoyable pastime is to be careful and not walk too fast."
In the late 1960s and early '70s, the city began deploying these smallish above-ground pools to neighborhoods without convenient access to the massive, Olympic-size WPA pools built in 1936 (like the one we saw in Astoria Park). By 1972, there were 74 mini-pools spread out around town, but their numbers dwindled once the city opened a new batch of in-ground pools in the early '70s; today there are only 19 mini-pools still in service. (You can read a wonderful, photo-filled history of public swimming in NYC here.)
The city also used to operate Swim Mobiles, which were trailer-size pools hauled around by trucks from one neighborhood to another. Here's a hilarious account of one out for a test run in the summer of 1987.
