In his failed bid for the Democratic mayoral nomination, Mr. Thompson pushed hard to win the votes of the city's Orthodox Jews. The text of the second bullet point on these posters, from what I can cobble together (here's a closer look), trumpets his opposition (which in reality was just a vague call for compromise) to the "billionaire Bloomberg" administration's recent decision to require parental consent before the performance of metzitzah b’peh, an ancient but potentially risky circumcision practice in which the mohel uses his mouth to suck blood from the infant's wound. It might seem strange that such an issue would get second billing on a campaign ad, but the new regulation infuriated the city's ultra-Orthodox communities (the target audience of these Yiddish-language posters in heavily Jewish Borough Park), forcing all the Democratic mayoral candidates to publicly state their position on the matter.

And it's looked like this for more than two years.

Perhaps once a smaller version of the nearby Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, this building is now occupied in part by the Foodland Supermarket and in part by the Shatzer Matzah Factory.

The famed cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, who appeared as himself in a cameo role in the landmark 1927 talking picture The Jazz Singer after turning down a larger part for religious reasons, served as chazzan here at Anshe Sfard for a couple of years until the synagogue's finances collapsed in the stock market crash of 1929. You can hear some of Rosenblatt's recordings, recently digitally restored by a devoted fan, here, and you can watch a musical tribute to "the greatest chazzan of all-time" here.

These people are purchasing live chickens (packed in the yellow crates) for the controversial annual ritual of kapparot practiced by some Orthodox Jews in the days leading up to Yom Kippur. In this custom, a chicken is "swung" ("waved" is a more accurate description, as you can see in this NY Times video) three times above one's head, symbolically transferring one's sins to the bird, and then slaughtered. In some cases, the meat is donated to those in need (some articles I've read say this rarely happens, while others say it usually does). In recent years, a growing number of animal rights activists and rabbis have been vocally denouncing kapparot as a cruel practice that violates the Jewish prohibition against the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals. They encourage instead the following of an alternative tradition in which money is used in place of a chicken.

This was originally the Menora Masonic Temple, and its cornerstone came from Solomon's Quarries in Jerusalem.

On the back of a Jewish school bus in Borough Park

The Bay Ridge Branch

At 4,260 feet, the main span of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was once the longest suspension bridge span in the world, and it still holds the title of longest in the Americas.

A strange little electrical shack just off the Belt Parkway