The stages of the butterfly life cycle are revealed as you follow this winding path through Long Island Mews.
I've done a little asking around, and I seem to be the only one who's never seen a kid riding one of these things.
On this site once stood the famous Elmhurst gas tanks, whose massive size and proximity to the oft-congested Long Island Expressway made them a perfect landmark for traffic reports. Surrounded by farmland when they were built (one in 1910 and the other in 1921), the tanks oversaw decades of tremendous change in Queens before being dismantled in the late 1990s.
The tanks each comprised five telescoping cylinders, lending them the surprising ability to vertically expand and contract depending on the volume of gas stored inside. Supposedly the telephone operators at the gas company would sometimes have to settle callers' bets about whether or not the heights of the tanks actually fluctuated.
Another interesting feature of the tanks is that each one had a rowboat moored inside it. Until the 1960s, all interior inspections had to be conducted by boat, with a worker paddling around looking for leaks, floating on the 17 million gallons of water that lay beneath each tank in an underground basin, acting as a sealant.
The equipment pictured above is part of a KidPower playground, wherein children generate electricity for the games they want to play (which themselves involve lots of running around) by peddling stationary bikes.
As I was taking this photo of the parking ramps at the Queens Place mall, an employee saw me and started walking toward me. Generally this means I'm about to get asked, with a fair amount of suspicion, "Hey, what are you doing?" I find this attitude rather disheartening; is it so hard to believe someone might be taking a genuine interest in your home or workplace, rather than trying to screw you over in some way?
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when this gentleman turned out to have approached me for a different reason altogether: to give me a tip on how to better appreciate this obviously (to him, anyway) noteworthy structure: "Pretty cool, huh? You should go online and check out the aerial photo. All these circles — it looks awesome." This revealed a curiosity, an engagement with the world, and a desire to share that were all really encouraging to me. For some reason, the phrase "ray of hope" popped into my head, symbolizing this one success in the fight against being too cool or important or busy to care about things like neat-looking parking ramps. So you can imagine my shock when I caught a glimpse of his ID badge and saw the name printed on it: Raymond Hope.
The previous sentence is not true.
So, without further ado, here is the aerial photo. Ol' not-Ray was right: there's certainly some unusual geometry at work here. But the circles are only part of the story.
This mall was originally an enormous Macy's department store that opened in 1965. Two years earlier, Macy's began buying up all the land on the irregularly shaped five-acre block where the mall now sits. Everyone sold out except for one little old lady, a widow by the name of Mary Sendek (or Sondek, depending on your source), who lived at the corner of Queens Boulevard and 55th Avenue. The proposed layout of the arena-like store called for only a slight intrusion into her backyard, but rather than shrink the circle by a few feet, Macy's decided to start building the original design, assuming she was just holding out for more money and could be bought off before the construction reached her property.
Macy's offered as much as $200,000, but Ms. Sendek refused to budge. She apparently had a dog she was very fond of, and didn't want to deprive him of the spacious backyard he so enjoyed. So Macy's had to cut a little notch (clearly visible from above) out of their otherwise perfect circle to skirt the edge of her backyard. Here's a great photo of her house standing alone against the immense, indented facade of the store.
Ms. Sendek died some years later, and a strip mall was built on her former property. As you can see, it takes up the full extent of the lot, all the way into the notch in the wall. Her legacy lives on.
Currently housed in an old A&P supermarket, this temple was founded by the late Swami Jagdishwaranand in 1972.
Along with a few of its comrades, this tree has clawed its way out of a crevice in this rock wall.
Lustre Street in Eastchester is disappearing, and its street sign is apparently following suit.
There are three streets in the area with related names. Dark Street was the original, named after Charles Darke, a mid-19th-century landowner. Then came Light Street, seemingly a playful take-off. Sometime in the 1920s, part of Dark Street was renamed Lustre Street, and has since all but vanished, hidden beneath houses, lawns, and driveways.
A mysterious trace of the past on a mysterious wall. There's also an ornate pillar in the wall bearing the name "DF Violet".
Generally filled with food, clothing, and household items, and often representing months of thrifty purchases, these barrels are sent to relatives back home throughout the year, but especially around Christmastime.
I've seen a handful of these signs around the borough and have always wondered what they mean. And now I know!
There are still a few old-timey businesses operating on White Plains Road up in Wakefield.
In case you were wondering, this door belongs to the Kingdom Encounter Church of the Greater Anointing Tabernacle, Inc.
A reminder of the large Irish population that once called Wakefield home
An oddball block-long remnant of the first postal route between New York and Boston, inaugurated in 1673
The 8-year-old gentleman in the white shirt asked me to inform you all that he is single.
Nikita Khrushchev once wrote this school a letter to be included in its 1959-1960 yearbook, but the Department of Education vetoed its publication. Sousa has been troubled in the years since, and is no stranger to the DOE's list of failing schools. It's had its bright spots though, including an unusual 7 AM Korean class, and it seemed to be headed in the right direction as recently as six months ago. But in a meeting at the end of April, a DOE panel voted to close the school, along with 23 others across the city that have been struggling.
there are still times when all you can do is tape a note to a door.
In case you can't figure out how to reset the clock after the power goes out
