On the left, we have a yard packed full of lights and inflatable figures — the classic American more-is-better approach to Christmas décor. On the right, we see a sparse, streamlined, monochromatic yuletide geometry — a much more austere expression of holiday cheer.
That's what a sign on the fence said. Here's the answer.
Another fine piece of literature from the holy pen of Tony "Consent is Puberty" Alamo (born Bernie Lazar Hoffman), the evangelist currently serving 175 years in federal prison for sexually abusing his child brides. I found this on the ground outside St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church; I wonder if followers of the anti-Catholic Alamo placed these newsletters on the windshields of all the cars parked at the church yesterday (Sunday).
The former Richmond Hill Baptist Church was acquired in 2008 by the Islamic Unity and Cultural Center of Plav-Gusinje. According to the center's website (Google-translated from Bosnian to English), the building is in the final phase of its conversion into a mosque and Islamic school. The only outward sign of its new religious orientation that I saw was a crescent-topped dome added sometime after September 2011.
(I just realized this is the "nameless church" we saw back in early 2013.)
This is the former home of Buttkiss the fish (named for Dick Butkus), a black pacu who died at the reported age of 45 in 2011. According to the shop's owner in 2009:
We actually sold him in 1968 to a Holocaust survivor named Kurt Emerick. The fish was about two inches long at that time. But he got so big he was knocking things over in Kurt’s fishtank. Kurt didn’t like that. He was a perfectionist. So he brought him back here in a bucket. Later Kurt got hit by a bus on Metropolitan Avenue and died. But the fish is still here. I had just gotten back from Nam and I decided to keep him.
One of the many handsome dwellings found on the winding streets of Kew Gardens (bird's-eye view)
The last time we passed by this spot on Queens Boulevard beside Queens Borough Hall, the somewhat controversial and sexist sculpture known as Civic Virtue was standing here, as it had been since 1941 (when it got booted from City Hall Park, where it was unveiled in 1922). The statue has since been moved to Green-Wood Cemetery and restored, while the fountain it stood upon has been left to collect fallen leaves inside a chain-link fence. There is apparently a plan in the works, however, to spruce up the old fountain with plantings and a plaque dedicating it to the women of Queens.
