Located on a quiet residential street in Elmhurst, this eye-catching Thai Buddhist temple comprises two rather incongruous architectural styles. It was built in the late 1990s, replacing a pair of old houses that previously stood on the site. One of the houses had served as the temple, while the other had been used as living quarters for the monks before it was heavily damaged by a fire. Here's a great article about the temple's early days in the mid-1990s, before the current building was erected.

This three-dimensional, truck-mounted re-creation of the iconic photo Lunch atop a Skyscraper* was sculpted by Sergio Furnari, a Sicilian-born artist who started out selling smaller versions of the work (which can now sometimes be found on view in the back of the truck) from a sidewalk table in SoHo in the 1990s. He spent about a year making the first life-size rendition, finishing it not long after 9/11. He was allowed to display it near the ground zero public viewing platform for a few months as a tribute to the ironworkers participating in the grueling cleanup effort, and he later took the piece on a tour around the country. After returning to New York, one of the figures was stolen right off the girder in 2007, but was then found wrapped in plastic behind a church six months later. Mr. Furnari sold the work in 2009, along with another full-size reproduction, to a couple of restaurateurs from Indiana; as far as I can tell, the sculpture you see above is the third large-scale one he's made.

* We've previously seen two other takes on this famous photograph.

PS 7

"Diffuse backyard tension between squirrels and wild birds with humor. . . . cleverly convert pesky squirrels into welcomed backyard comedians. You can't help but laugh the moment you witness a squirrel seated in his very own patio furniture eating corn."

What could be better than that? How about a horse head squirrel feeder: "Makes feasting squirrels look they're wearing a Creepy Horse Mask . . . Takes arrogant squirrels down a peg".

This video says it all.

The burning of the General Slocum, an excursion steamer that was carrying residents of Manhattan's Little Germany to a church picnic when it caught fire in the East River in 1904, was NYC's deadliest disaster prior to 9/11. Many of the 1,021 people who died are interred here at All Faiths Cemetery (known at the time as Lutheran Cemetery).

The monument above is dedicated to the 61 unidentified victims, whose remains are buried in the surrounding plot. It was unveiled at a ceremony a year after the tragedy by the youngest surviving passenger, a little girl named Adella Liebenow, who would also go on to become the final surviving passenger prior to her death in 2004 at the age of 100. (Another survivor, a decade older, made it to 109 — both she and Adella were still alive when the twin towers fell.)

From a Slate article published in 2004:

In Hidalgo, which opens Friday, Viggo Mortensen plays Frank T. Hopkins, an American cowboy who takes his mustang overseas to compete in the Ocean of Fire, an endurance horse race across thousands of miles of Arabian desert. The trailer bills the Disney/Touchstone movie as an "incredible true story," and the tale of Hopkins' travels is certainly incredible. But is it really true?

Well, there truly was a Frank T. Hopkins. He lived from 1865 to 1951, and in his memoirs, which he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s with his wife Gertrude, he exhibits plenty of cowboy swagger—he calls Buffalo Bill a stinking drunk and Sitting Bull a coward. He also claims that he was a long-distance U.S. Cavalry rider by age 12; the winner of hundreds of long-distance races all across America; a friend of Black Elk; a star in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show for over 30 seasons; and the first American ever to compete in—and win—the Ocean of Fire.

The problem is, each of these claims is demonstrably false.

Today I saw a few different sections of All Faiths Cemetery set aside for Civil War vets. Reflecting the overall population of the cemetery, most of these soldiers were of German origin.

Like his son Donald, Fred Christ Trump was a very successful real estate developer. (We've previously seen an old Depression-era supermarket he built.) Unlike his son, however, he had a reputation for modesty and frugality. According to his family, he would regularly visit his construction sites at the end of the day, still dressed in his suit, and would walk around collecting unused nails to make sure they didn't get wasted. He would also often handle the pest extermination duties in his buildings himself, just to save money. Here at All Faiths, there is only one indication that his gravesite belongs to a family of above-average means: while most of the footpaths in the cemetery are cracked and/or partially covered with dirt, the path leading to his headstone is very smoothly and freshly paved, but then quickly returns to oblivion once it passes the family's graves.

UPDATE: Okay, maybe Fred wasn't so different from Donald after all.

on the Lower Montauk Branch, located just outside the southern entrance to All Faiths Cemetery. The Long Island Rail Road ceased passenger service here and at four other stops on the line in 1998 (before eventually canceling passenger service on the line altogether in 2012), deciding the stations were too "lightly used" to justify paying for the improvements needed to keep them open. As a 1998 NY Times article put it:

"Lightly used" may be an understatement for Glendale station, which is actually two forlorn strips of pavement beside the tracks, with no signs, no timetables -- nothing, in fact, that suggests it is an official stop on the L.I.R.R.'s Montauk branch.

According to L.I.R.R. records, only two customers used the station each day: Ms. McDonald, who carries her lunch in a plastic bag, and Mr. Sullivan, with his Newsday tucked under his arm. Both work in Glendale. (Mr. Mueller, who rides the train to the Nassau Coliseum only when there is an Islanders game, does not show up on the daily passenger counts.)