Towering above Jersey Street since 1924

There's no shortage of beautiful old houses here in New Brighton:

"Up and down hills, along shaded streets of gnarled trees and overgrown landscaping, there are grand examples of what constituted great style to the wealthy Manhattan exiles who built them between 1834 and the early years of the 20th century. Gingerbread Victorians, spiky Gothic Revival and Second Empire structures with mansard roofs alternate with the soft, curved arches and rounded turrets of shingle style and Queen Anne homes, each house built as a symbol of the status its first owner had achieved."

The Staten Island Firefighter's Memorial at the Chapel of St. Paul

15 Ellicott Place, built around 1886

from the aptly named Skyline Playground

The official plaque for this city landmark states that it's "the last unaltered survivor" of Hamilton Park, an early "model suburb" built between 1852 and 1874. According to the NY Times, "the subdivision featured cottages of 12 to 14 rooms with carriage drives and provisions for live-in staff. It was a hit with wealthy people from Manhattan, 30 minutes away by steamer, who could entertain themselves at the local yacht club or listen to the legendary Jenny Lind warble from the stage of one of the posh waterfront hotels."

The bulk carrier Balder is docked here at the Atlantic Salt Company, which supplies most of NYC's road salt — hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff. Almost all of the city's salt is of foreign origin; it's cheaper to transport it from other countries by ship than from upstate by train. You can check out some cool shots of Balder's interior here, and see the ship in action (i.e., unloading salt) here.

Here's how Christopher Gray of the NY Times describes this circa-1887 house: "It is awkwardly spectacular, a mix of tight-lipped Puritanism and freewheeling shingled bumps, with a witch's-hat tower."

Built between 1874 and 1885 as a carriage house and servants' quarters

Established in 1839, St. Peter's is the oldest Catholic parish on Staten Island. The original church building here, dating back to 1844, was destroyed by a fire in the 1890s; the current church was erected in 1900-01.

Behind this wall sits St. Ann's Novitiate of the Little Sisters of the Poor, where nuns-in-training spend a couple of years before taking their temporary vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and hospitality. (Last year we passed by the other side of the property, where the order's Queen of Peace Residence, a home for the aged, is located.)

According to its website, this Haitian church has over 2,000 members.

Buy diamonds on credit, then pawn them to pay your creditors!

at one of the city's oldest stormwater Greenstreets.

How does this fancy doodad work? Well, if the weather station is white... that means it's snowing.

"I knew we shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque."

That's my guess.

Some old scents, some new. The ever-popular BIG BOOBS makes another appearance, while Monkey Fart looks to have overtaken Gorila Burp as the mammalian gaseous emission of choice.

This building was dedicated in 1906. You can see some interior shots here.

This isolated section of Brookville Boulevard, winding nearly a mile through the wetlands of Idlewild Park Preserve at the edge of New York City, is known as Snake Road to locals. This aerial view gives you a good sense of the area's unique geography.

Sold at 120th Street and Rockaway Boulevard; perplexingly advertised in small type on a marshland fence that runs alongside Snake Road. Check it out in Street View.

Idlewild Park Preserve preserves the name of Idlewild Airport. (The airport's name was officially changed to New York International Airport before it opened, but it was still popularly called Idlewild.) In late 1963, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the airport was renamed in his honor. Looking out over the marsh here, you can see the JFK air traffic control tower off in the distance.

A brief forensic investigation concluded that this safe has been sitting here beside Snake Road since before the snow fell, but was recently moved, perhaps in a failed bid to liberate its contents. A closer look reveals at least one unsuccessful attempt to pry the door open.

stationed beside Snake Road

Land duck 'n' water duck, found by the remains of an old boat in the marsh

Standing at the edge of New York City, I'm taking this photo from the wooden footbridge over Hook Creek that connects Meadowmere, Queens (on the left) with Meadowmere Park, Nassau County (on the right). These two tiny neighborhoods, nestled together with each surrounded almost entirely by the other's county, constitute something of a geographical yin and yang. This map will help you understand what I'm talking about; the dashed line is the city boundary, with Queens generally to the north and west and Nassau to the south and east.

The story of this area has long been that Meadowmere Park is the nicer neighborhood, with its well-paved streets and sewers and tidy lawns, while Meadowmere is largely forgotten by NYC, its low-lying streets more susceptible to flooding and its general appearance more ragged. (The city didn't actually have title to its streets until 1995.) Recently, however, the city has started paying some attention to Meadowmere, finally building sewers in the neighborhood a few years ago.

This sign is a good indication of how isolated the community of Meadowmere is. It's one of the very few places in Queens where the borough's standard hyphenated addresses are not used. And the street numbers (1st through 3rd) are an anomaly as well. Starting a century ago, a single massive, messy street grid was imposed on almost all of Queens, with the notable exception of the Rockaway Peninsula, which has an independently numbered set of streets. But there are still a couple of renegade pockets of the borough that have their own street numbers, and Meadowmere is one.

The street pictured above is one of three different First (or 1st) Streets in Queens. The one that belongs to the borough-wide grid is in western Astoria (map), and there is another in the almost-as-obscure-as-Meadowmere neighborhood of Ramblersville (map). Interestingly, while there's no Second or Third Street in Ramblersville, 102nd Street and 104th Street (and a handful of avenues/drives/roads) from the main Queens grid do manage to sneak in and mix it up with their low-numbered cousin.

Depicted above are a couple of features already familiar to us: the wooden footbridge connecting Meadowmere Park to Meadowmere (a popular summertime diving spot for neighborhood kids) and an airplane screaming overhead.

That's some World Trade Center steel at left, but this doesn't count in my official 9/11 memorial tally since it's in Nassau County.

Before talking to them (the Department of Justice, the New York Police Department, and the FBI), talk to me.

Built out into the wetlands north of the airport. Compare to what we saw at LaGuardia.