Many of New York's cemeteries are running out of room, but Washington Cemetery is fully sold out, having already replaced all its roads with narrower footpaths to make room for more graves. Meanwhile, the owners of unused plots, now highly in demand, are selling them on the black market and raking in the dough.

This almost entirely Jewish cemetery was founded by James Arlington Bennet, a member (though apparently not a sincere one) of the Mormon Church who was asked by Joseph Smith to be his running mate in the presidential election of 1844. But Bennet, a "wily Easterner", "saw the futility of that campaign and claimed to be constitutionally ineligible by reason of foreign birth. Believing that no one would buy books by an American author, Bennet had posed as Irish-born to further sales of his manual on bookkeeping even though his parents immigrated to America before his birth."

In 1887, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle recalled some more colorful details about the man:

His name was James Arlington Bennet, and he was always proud of the fact that there was only one "t" in his name, saying that all those with two of those consonants at the end of their name were Irish and informers. [The monument marking Bennet's grave here at the cemetery reads "BENNETT".] . . . Mr. Bennet always had an idea that he was an inventor, and to prove that his idea was correct he invented and made a pair of wings which, he said, if placed upon any one's shoulders would enable him to fly when and where he pleased. The villagers did not seem to have faith in the wing business, for none of them gave any signs of being willing to test the invention, so the old man became angry and went over to Castle Garden where he employed a native of Erin, ostensibly to work on a farm, but in reality to become famous by proving that the invention was a success. The stranger was not long enough in the village to become acquainted or get acclimatized before Mr. Bennet took him to the top of the cemetery office, where he fixed the wings to the shoulders of the new farm hand and said, "Fly or die," at the same time pointing a musket at the head of the Irish immigrant. Under such a condition of things the stranger thought it best to attempt to fly and he did so, but unfortunately in so doing he broke his neck.

and the sidewalk etrog vendors are plying their wares in Borough Park.

at Sunset Park

Pardon the blurry photo. This is one of two men I saw fixing shoes on the sidewalk of 8th Avenue.

and the ubiquitous red plastic bags of Chinatown. (The linked article is about Manhattan's Chinatown, but I imagine the same reasoning applies here in Brooklyn.)

The heart of Brooklyn's Chinatown

Another erstwhile laundry along the tracks of the Bay Ridge Branch

That's the Bay Ridge Branch down low and the Sea Beach Line (N train) higher up, just visible through the trees in the background.

That I-beam jutting out of the facade was probably part of a hoist system for raising and/or lowering laundry to/from the second story, which, as you can tell from the extent of the newer sections of brick, used to have openings much larger than the current windows.

This gap in the fence leads to a little makeshift shack and a bench hidden in the dense overgrowth between 61st Street and the tracks of the Bay Ridge Branch.

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