I'm standing at the northwestern corner of Colonial Square, a townhouse development, gazing out over a vast expanse of phragmites. The hill at left is part of the old Brookfield landfill, which, like its neighbor Fresh Kills, is currently being turned into a park.

Staten Island's deer population has exploded over the past several years, rising from 24 in 2008 to 763 in the winter of 2013-14.

Above: the most photogenic of the dozens of piles of deer droppings I saw in United Hebrew Cemetery today.

Here at United Hebrew Cemetery, there's a large section of graves covered with horizontal slabs of granite, which happen to provide an ideal surface for the accumulation of stones left behind by visitors (a Jewish custom). For whatever reason, this cemetery sports a much wider variety of stones, including some flattened glass marbles, than I've seen elsewhere.

United Hebrew Cemetery was the first cemetery I visited on this walk, all the way back on Day 1. It's had quite a bit more money embezzled from its coffers since then!

This memorial is located outside St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Roman Catholic Church in the East Village. If you take a closer look, you can see it also includes a reference to the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940.

These jagged rump jabbers may be second to none when it comes to repelling a human tuchus, but they're powerless to stop the advances of a rogue banana peel.

(Spotted in Manhattan after returning from Staten Island.)

The Lane Theater on New Dorp Lane opened on February 10, 1938, playing One Hundred Men and a Girl as its first feature film. According to the theater's 1988 landmark designation report, its interior "is one of the last surviving pre-World War II movie theater interiors on Staten Island, and one of the few known largely intact examples of the Depression-era, Art Moderne style theater interior in New York City." Here's how the architectural historian Christopher Gray described the place in 1988:

A flowing serpentine corridor leads to a 550-seat auditorium in the Art Moderne style. There is stepped paneling on the ceiling and streamlined bands on the walls like those on a 1930's radio. The original carpet and stage curtain had zig-zag patterns.

The most striking element of the interior is the painted ceiling. Large areas of plum, green and blue are bounded by rainbows of color and decorated with random designs that seem patterned after stellar explosions but bear an abstract resemblance to the masks of comedy and tragedy often used in theater decoration.

Period photographs also show unusual painting schemes along the walls, including four large areas with more stellar designs set against black fields. According to the yearly Theater Catalogue for 1948, the Lane was one of the first theaters to introduce fluorescent murals using black light.

The walls were painted over in 1976, but the recessed black lighting still survives, as do other, exposed lighting fixtures. These range from unusual Buck Rogers-style aluminum affairs to Empire-moderne chandeliers, which mix classical metalwork with modernistic glass tubing.

at Piece-A-Cake

In April of last year, then-Representative Michael "I'll break you in half — like a boy" Grimm, a former FBI agent and Marine, was indicted in federal court on a slew of charges stemming from his pre-Congressional stint as a health-food restaurateur. He was accused of underreporting wages and revenue and hiring undocumented workers at his terribly named Upper East Side restaurant, Healthalicious (slogan: "better than delicious"), as well as lying under oath in a lawsuit brought by restaurant employees.

Despite his legal troubles, Grimm decided to run for re-election in November, leading some to speculate that he was seeking another term largely so that he could then offer to resign as part of a plea bargain. Even with all the controversy swirling around him, he handily won re-election in a truly pitiful contest over a truly pitiful opponent, Domenic Recchia. One voter told the NY Times: "Everybody is kind of counting on Grimm getting convicted and then maybe there will be a special election . . . And maybe we’ll have better choices."

On December 23, a few weeks after his victory, Grimm pleaded guilty to one felony charge of tax fraud while also acknowledging that he had committed perjury and wire fraud and hired illegal immigrants, but he nevertheless vowed not to step down from Congress. Less than a week later, however, after meeting with House Speaker John Boehner, he announced that he would be resigning effective January 5, having served not even a day of his new term. Now it's early March and his former district office here on New Dorp Lane still looks the same as ever (compare: September 2012, March 2015), even though it's been nearly two months since one could accurately describe Michael G. Grimm as "Congressman".

UPDATE (Oct. 31, 2015): Dan Donovan, the Staten Island district attorney whose office handled the controversial (because it didn't produce an indictment) grand jury inquiry into the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the police, was selected by the voters in May to replace Grimm in Congress, and he has since taken over Grimm's old district office on New Dorp Lane. In July, Grimm was sentenced to eight months in prison, with the judge telling him: "Your moral compass, Mr. Grimm, needs some reorientation." He started serving his sentence in September at a minimum-security prison camp in western Pennsylvania.

on the Staten Island Railway. Compare to Grant City, one station away.

This rail line opened in 1860. A station building that was erected here at New Dorp in 1889 can still be found standing; it was moved to Historic Richmond Town in 1965. Check it out in Street View.

According to the Parks Department:

When Parks acquired this land on 8th Street between Allison and Beach Avenues in 1970, the property was overgrown and filled with junk piles. The small plot had been in the public domain since P.S. 9 was built here in 1894. In the intervening years, the land housed various public institutions and in 1963 was home to a police precinct. Although there was a need for recreational space, New Dorp residents resisted the idea of a public park. They were concerned that the .7 acre [park] would attract drug dealers. As a compromise, Parks agreed to plant trees, creating a fenced-in woodland area with no public access.

Zelkova serrata, I believe. You can take a closer look in Street View.

John "Jack" Hynes