Just a few days after the Boston Marathon bombings, paranoia is running high. Someone called 911 to report a "suspicious package" at the intersection of Farragut Road and East 105th Street. In Canarsie. On the corner of a vacant lot. The cop did a serviceable job of sounding serious when he told me that's why I couldn't pass through. "Hey, if someone calls 911, we can't just kick it into the gutter", he said with a smile. I had to circle back around later in the day, after the bomb scare was over, to pick up this block.
on East 100th Street. On its page about this playground, the Parks Department offers a nice little history of children's recreation in the city, featuring this quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "If we would have our citizens contented and law-abiding, we must not sow the seeds of discontent in childhood by denying children their birthright of play."
One of two synagogues I saw today that now share space with adult living facilities — a sign of Canarsie's shrinking Jewish population?
The parlor's been closed for more than two years, but the sign's still hanging in there. To quote a post from last March:
After struggling for years, all the NYC OTB parlors were finally shuttered in late 2010. A considerable number of them, however, have managed to eke out a pathetic sort of survival, courtesy of the sluggish economy: their signs and logos, or at least traces of them, still adorn many of the vacant, unrented storefronts that once housed the parlors. The former customers, of course, have had to move on, but what has become of Jesus Leonardo? Not to worry, friends: he just keeps on keepin' on.
This is the end of the line in Canarsie — the L train's terminal station. For much of the first half of the 20th century, however, there was a trolley extension that carried passengers from this point down to the old Golden City amusement park on the shores of Jamaica Bay. You can see some pictures of Golden City here, and read an article about its opening day in 1907 here (referring to one of the park's premier attractions, King Pharaoh, a sub-headline reads: "Educated Horse Sells Pictures").
From the station here on Rockaway Parkway north of Glenwood Road, the trolley ran along a private right-of-way, curving south for a couple of blocks before settling into a nice, straight course a little east of, and paralleling, East 95th Street. Looking at aerial photos, you can still see traces of the trolley route: an oddly shaped building oriented diagonally to the street grid; a curving backyard tree line; a slender, slanting mid-block parking lot. There are also some tangible remnants to be found: the pole near the right edge of this photo is one of several old trolley utility poles in the area that have been turned into lampposts.
