A common sight at Jewish cemeteries, gates like this one announce the name of the burial society that owns a particular section of plots.
This World War I memorial was sculpted by Anton Schaaf, who also created the bas-relief panels for the Ridgewood War Memorial and the doughboy statue at the Park Slope Armory.
This is one of two Workmen's Circle burial sections at Mount Lebanon Cemetery.
That's Nathan of Nathan's Famous hot dogs. Ida, his wife, is said to have created the recipe that made the dogs so famous.
This isn't the first time we've encountered frankfurter royalty in a cemetery, by the way. In Green-Wood Cemetery, we came across the mausoleum of Charles Feltman, who is often credited with inventing the hot dog, and then we learned of a connection between him and Nathan:
Feltman died in 1910, but his restaurant stayed in business, and it was a few years later that a young Polish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker found work there slicing rolls. Supposedly with some encouragement and borrowed money from his then-unknown co-workers Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante, Nathan opened his own hot dog joint in 1916 at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues, where he and his wife served up frankfurters for just a nickel apiece, half the price his former employer charged.As we've seen, it's a Jewish custom to place rocks on gravestones that you visit. If you take a closer look at the rocks sitting atop Nathan's and Ida's stones, you'll see they've been decorated with the Nathan's Famous logo. Painted on the bottom of each one are four names: Steve, Michelle, Diana, and Lucas — presumably the folks who left the rocks here at Mount Lebanon. As it turns out, Steve is Nathan and Ida's grandson, Michelle is Steve's wife, and Diana and Lucas are their two children. Steve and Michelle head up the International Association for the Advancement of Peace. Diana was named the Humane Teen of the Year by the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education in 2007, and is, or at least was at that time, a vegetarian. Lucas is a self-described "hypnotist, mentalist, speaker, writer, & explorer of the mind" and a father-described "explorer and facilitator of multidimensional reality".
According to legend (and Nathan's grandson), with some variations from one telling to another, people were initially skeptical about the quality and contents of a wiener that could be sold for a mere five cents. To alleviate these concerns, Nathan hired people to dress as doctors and eat hot dogs in front of his stand, giving the impression that medical professionals considered his food perfectly healthy. Before long, with the arrival of the subway in Coney Island (and with the terminal station located right across the street), the dogs started selling like crazy, and now, almost a century later, Nathan's Famous remains a household name.
This must be the caretaker's house here at Mount Lebanon Cemetery.
The circles surrounding this mausoleum door represent the twelve tribes of Israel.
to Michael Walsh. A sign on the tree reads: "THIS TREE IS PLANTED IN MEMORY OF MICHAEL WALSH". Custom-made street signs for Michael Walsh's Place and Zero Days Way are mounted on a pole next to the tree pit. You can watch in Street View as this memorial takes shape over the years, starting with an empty patch of sidewalk: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
This plaque at the College of Staten Island, dated September 17, 1987, reads:
A PROMISE FULFILLEDWhat was the Willowbrook State School? As we learned a few months ago:
The institution once known as the Willowbrook State School, which occupied this site for thirty-six years, was closed in 1987.
The end of this institution symbolizes the success and appropriateness of New York State's commitment to provide an extensive and comprehensive program of community living opportunities for its citizens with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.
The Willowbrook State School was the country's largest state-run institution for the mentally disabled. By the 1960s, it had over 6,000 residents, 2,000 more than it was designed to accommodate. Underfunded and understaffed, it "offered a mean, often desperate existence" to the people who lived there. After a visit in 1965, Bobby Kennedy described the place as "border[ing] on a snake pit".So that makes two plaques here at CSI that acknowledge Willowbrook's existence. One, half-hidden behind a rose bush at the back corner of a building, does at least pay tribute, albeit in very vague and euphemistic terms, to all the helpless people who suffered abuse and neglect at this state-run institution. The other plaque, above, located in a little treed area near the middle of campus, makes no mention of the poor souls who lived here but instead just offers the state government a nice pat on the back for finally shutting the place down (after being sued into submission).
But it wasn't until 1972 that the wretched conditions at Willowbrook were brought into the national spotlight, when a TV reporter named Geraldo Rivera snuck into one of the wards with a handheld camera and documented the awful scene: "children lying naked on the floor, their bodies contorted, their feces spread on walls".
This prompted a lawsuit that led to the eventual closing of the institution in 1987. Many of the buildings were taken over and renovated by the College of Staten Island, which opened a new campus — the largest college campus in the city — on the site in 1993.
After taking the previous picture, I went inside to meet a friend here at the College of Staten Island. Five hours later, I came out to find the world looking a little different than I remembered.
Standing at the western edge of the College of Staten Island, I'm looking into Willowbrook Park.
We're back in the picturesque neighborhood of Westerleigh, formerly known as Prohibition Park.
(Looks like I've already photographed this house once!)
I think it goes without saying that this park, located in the northerly part of the neighborhood of Westerleigh, had its playful name bestowed upon it by Henry Stern.
The Kissena Velodrome, one of 29 or so velodromes in the country, hosted the 1964 US Olympic track cycling trials. By 2002, however, after years of neglect, it was in such poor condition that an article in Bicycling magazine declared it "the nation's worst cycling track". It was rededicated in 2004 after being renovated as part of NYC's failed bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, but now, more than a decade later, it appears to have sprouted a nice array of cracks once again.
Perhaps expressing a yearning for a simpler life of rustic pleasures, these young fishermen are spending this sunny spring Saturday sitting beside Kissena Lake, their lines idling in its still waters. The gentleman on the left is clearly the leader, as indicated by his camouflage hat and authentic overturned five-gallon bucket. (Note the rinky-dink kitty-litter pails that his more citified companions are perched upon.) As I walked by, a country song — about fishing — was playing on their portable stereo.
UPDATE: A few months later, nutrient-rich runoff that was washed into the lake by a flash flood triggered a bloom of blue-green algae that killed at least 150 fish.
I saw a number of turtles sunning themselves on the rocks of Kissena Lake today.
This little monument and the ones from the previous two photos (Korean War and 9/11) are all located in the same part of Kissena Park. As I was walking through the area, I saw three young girls wandering around and inspecting everything. They were discussing whether the Korean War memorial or the 9/11 one was more important. The size of the Korean War memorial makes a seemingly indisputable case for it being the more important of the two, but, then again, I would imagine that if I were a young New Yorker, even if I had not yet been born when the twin towers came crashing down, any mention of 9/11 would probably seem far more powerful than even the most imposing monument to some long-ago war I'd never heard of.
When the girls reached Ms. McCarthy's memorial, the youngest one asked what it was. The oldest took a minute to examine it and then announced: "Dorothy McCarthy. She played tennis and was loved."
According to a nearby plaque set amid some pavers designed to resemble railroad ties, the short-lived Flushing-to-Creedmoor section of A.T. Stewart's Central Railroad of Long Island passed by this spot on its way through what is now Kissena Park. As we've seen, portions of the railroad's route east and west of Kissena Park have been incorporated into Kissena Corridor Park.
In recent years, there's apparently been a lot of strife at this huge community garden (aerial view) in Kissena Corridor Park. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article:
Despite its serene setting and rows of flowers and vegetables, a community garden in Flushing, Queens, has turned into a battlefield.You can read the rest of the story here (text-only version here).
Violent fights, death threats and shouting matches, sometimes involving fistfuls of dirt, have become routine at Evergreen Community Garden, leading to volunteer guards at the entrance and police patrols. And almost all of the tangles involve elderly Korean gardeners, officials and witnesses say.
The disputes grew out of the city Parks & Recreation Department's decision last year to take control of the 5-acre garden from a Korean-American senior citizens' group, which had transformed the trash-filled public space into a working garden back in the early 1980s.
The parks department—which contends the seniors' group had been improperly selling produce from the city-owned plot and excluding outsiders—turned control of the park over to its GreenThumb network of community gardens and installed a manager last year.
But the older gardeners are still trying to reclaim the land, at times by drastic means.
A year ago, the garden's 75-year-old former manager clutched a lighter and container of gasoline, threatening to light himself on fire if he didn't get his old job back, city officials said. The incident prompted a police hostage negotiation team to respond and two nearby schools to be locked down.
This is a male cottonwood. It's the females that produce the seeds with the fluffy white sails that give the trees their name.
After throwing back a few in the Emergency Room, be sure to stop by the Recovery Room, located just over three blocks from New York Hospital Queens.
A September 2014 Street View image shows three other sports cars (including another Corvette) parked at the house across the street.
You ask where I live
Here's the address I give
The four winds and the seven seas
I didn't see any signs indicating this, but the playground that contains the Seven Seas Sports Courts is apparently called Four Winds Playground. Henry Stern's fingerprints are all over this place, from the unusual names (that are likely a reference to an old song — wouldn't be the first time) to the animal art above the entrance.
I don't know why Mr. Stern would have picked these names for this place in particular; perhaps they're just a general nod to the international character of Queens.
