And it's looked like this for more than two years.
In his failed bid for the Democratic mayoral nomination, Mr. Thompson pushed hard to win the votes of the city's Orthodox Jews. The text of the second bullet point on these posters, from what I can cobble together (here's a closer look), trumpets his opposition (which in reality was just a vague call for compromise) to the "billionaire Bloomberg" administration's recent decision to require parental consent before the performance of metzitzah b’peh, an ancient but potentially risky circumcision practice in which the mohel uses his mouth to suck blood from the infant's wound. It might seem strange that such an issue would get second billing on a campaign ad, but the new regulation infuriated the city's ultra-Orthodox communities (the target audience of these Yiddish-language posters in heavily Jewish Borough Park), forcing all the Democratic mayoral candidates to publicly state their position on the matter.
of the fourth annual Maureen Henry Walk of Hope. I just happened to stumble upon the start here in Sunset Park.
Today's walk set a new record for me: I saw at least 50 fig trees as I navigated the streets of Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst. (Brooklyn's Italian neighborhoods are known for their abundance of figs.)
"Distinguished as one of the most enduring neighborhood movie palaces in New York", the Walker (named not after the noble pedestrian, but rather the scandal-tarred former mayor) was open from 1928 until 1988, although it spent its last few years as a four-screen multiplex. You can see some old photos of the beautiful interior here.
Despite the name and the freakish appearance of the fruit, these flowers are delightfully fragrant. The thick growth of the vines conceals what's on the other side of this fence: a long and narrow, densely planted vegetable garden tucked in between 62nd Street and the parallel tracks of the N Train, running almost the entire length of the block between 10th and 11th Avenues. (Aerial view here.) It's nearly half an acre in area, and there's a tremendous amount of stuff growing back there, but I saw no indication that it's a community garden. I wonder if someone's just leasing the property from the MTA for use as an urban farm.
A kind of clever but mostly just weird name for a lingerie store
I often see metal streetscape components that were cast in India, China, and Harrison, New Jersey, but this is the first time I've noticed one from Thailand. Maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention to the tops of fire hydrant bollards!
Yet another use for one of these oft-ignored sidewalk fixtures
This gap in the fence leads to a little makeshift shack and a bench hidden in the dense overgrowth between 61st Street and the tracks of the Bay Ridge Branch.
That I-beam jutting out of the facade was probably part of a hoist system for raising and/or lowering laundry to/from the second story, which, as you can tell from the extent of the newer sections of brick, used to have openings much larger than the current windows.
That's the Bay Ridge Branch down low and the Sea Beach Line (N train) higher up, just visible through the trees in the background.
Another erstwhile laundry along the tracks of the Bay Ridge Branch
and the ubiquitous red plastic bags of Chinatown. (The linked article is about Manhattan's Chinatown, but I imagine the same reasoning applies here in Brooklyn.)
Pardon the blurry photo. This is one of two men I saw fixing shoes on the sidewalk of 8th Avenue.
