"It's all about the cones, baby."

hardened into stepping stones at the end of Lester Street

Perhaps a remnant of the old Lorillard estate — the Lorillards started what is now the Lorillard Tobacco Company (which makes Newport and Kent cigarettes, among others) in 1760, building a still-standing snuff mill down by the Bronx River in the 1840s — this little overlook now sits alone in the woods just off the Bronx River Parkway.

It looks like a giant mud pit today, but this patch of dirt on the bank of the Bronx River is actually a volunteer-built racecourse for radio-controlled cars. Check out this video of an official race here at the track.

of this corrugated, muralated fence

the Bronx River is running high.

According to a sign on the wall, this formerly mysterious and fence-shrouded Department of Health building we saw tucked beneath the White Plains Road Line back in September used to be the Williamsbridge Baby Health Station, but it currently serves as a Parks Department district headquarters and comfort station.

A long-time fixture on 7th Avenue

This block of 13th Street, just west of Prospect Park, is lined with old-timey-looking gas lamps evoking the horse-drawn days of yore. Even the oldest lamps, however, date back only as far as the 1960s, when the Brooklyn Union Gas Company began its "Cinderella" program. Worried about the deterioration of Brooklyn as people began fleeing to the suburbs — you can't very well sell gas to a vacant building — the company started purchasing abandoned properties in declining neighborhoods, renovating them, equipping them with gas appliances and lights, and then selling them, all in an effort to show the potential of those neighborhoods and encourage others to buy and improve the surrounding houses. Exterior gas illumination, with all its attendant quaintness, proved to be quite popular here in Park Slope, and many homeowners have since chosen to install lamps of their own.