The southern end of Fort Tryon Park, where this overlook is located, was once the estate of Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, a wealthy industrialist who moved to New York from Chicago in 1901 after retiring as head of the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company at the age of 40. Never one to suffer the restraints of modesty, Billings once famously had the grand ballroom of Louis Sherry's restaurant decked out as a woodland scene, complete with a layer of sod on the floor, and threw a lavish party wherein 36 formally attired guests dined on horseback (photo), sipping chilled champagne from their saddlebags while being served by personal attendants dressed as grooms. (The horses were brought up to the ballroom by freight elevator.)

I didn't realize it at the time, but I when I took this photo (looking out over the Henry Hudson Parkway, the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge, and the New Jersey Palisades), I was perched on top of a massive vaulted stone gallery through which, and over which, a 1600-foot winding driveway (which still exists as a pedestrian path) once passed on its way up the ridge to Billings's opulent mansion. The mansion burned down in 1926, but the gallery remains, one of a few vestiges of the luxurious lifestyle that once flourished on these grounds. (This bird's-eye view shows where the gallery is situated in the park today.)

Roosevelt Avenue

A happening place during Durga Puja

Even the most innocent and lifeless toys are no longer safe — not with this twisted, ruthless predator on the loose.

This little playground's name, I assume, comes from the adjacent Queens Health Network facility. In a 2006 survey for fretful parents who like to complain about things, it racked up two decidedly un-sanctuary-like safety hazard warnings: "Toxic Playground Risk" and, my personal favorite, "Head Entrapment".

Gotta look sharp for Good Friday.

These rockets (Titan on the left, Atlas on the right), built for the Air Force and later acquired by NASA, were once part of the US Space Park at the 1964 World's Fair, and are now on display outside the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows. After being shipped to Ohio for refurbishment in 2001, they made their return to Queens, strapped to flatbed trucks, in 2003. On their journey across Manhattan and Brooklyn, some passing motorists and pedestrians confused them for nuclear missiles to be used in the war against Iraq.

I haven't been counting murals, like this one, that reference 9/11 but don't really seem specific to it.

The cheapest St. Michael statues in town