and Strange Men — Sideshows by the Seashore

Do people actually fly from New York to Miami for a butt lift? Don't we have plenty of good butt doctors here?

If this were a summer afternoon, the stalls at left would be open and you'd see people playing all sorts of carnival games, like the bathroom-themed Stinky Feet. The stalls at right, however, would still be shuttered. The property on that side of the walkway, including the 1880s Grashorn Building (said to be Coney Island's oldest structure), has been vacant for several years now, courtesy of Joe Sitt, Coney Island's infamous "un-developer".

Looming in the distance is the Wonder Wheel. If you look closely, you'll notice that all of its cars are missing. It turns out that they get taken down each year during the off-season, and their return to the Wheel "is the first sign of spring in Coney Island. Being there to see the 24 cars go up, the Swinging ones first and then the Stationary, is like seeing crocuses bloom before your eyes."

The Cyclone at age 87.5

This honorary street sign marks the location on the Coney Island Boardwalk where members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club meet every Sunday from November to April for their weekly dip in the Atlantic Ocean. According to its website, the club was founded in 1903 and is the oldest winter bathing organization in the United States.

New York Aquarium

Det. Liu ❤

I saw a number of blue ribbons in the area today, but I couldn't figure out what they meant — until I passed by what turned out to be the house of Wenjian Liu, one of the two police officers (the other was Rafael Ramos) gunned down in their patrol car in Bed-Stuy on December 20. After seeing a little memorial sign in front of the house, I realized that the ribbons had been put up by neighbors as a tribute to the murdered officers.

at Kings Highway

The seven seas?

On-the-job tools or self-defense weapons?

If you look closely, you'll notice a wine-colored bra fastened to the front of this garbage truck. Is this an indication that a female sanitation worker operates the vehicle? Or is it just a new take on the old chicks-dig-stuffed-animals approach to truck decoration?

From an excellent NY Times article about the "grille-mounted cuddle object[s]" often found on the front of big trucks:

Robert Marbury, an artist who photographed dozens of Manhattan bumper fauna for a project in 2000 . . . said he had once asked a trash hauler why he had a family of three mismatched bears strapped to his rig.

''He said: 'Yo, man, I drive a garbage truck. How am I going to get the ladies to look at me?' ''

The city's decision to build a new marine transfer station here on Gravesend Bay, part of an effort to "distribute garbage disposal across the city more equitably", has angered many in the community. No surprise there. Everyone wants to continue producing ridiculous amounts of waste, but no one wants the disposal of that waste to affect them in any way. But the new twist here is that, in addition to the standard NIMBY concerns about such a project — truck traffic, air quality, odor, noise — the transfer station's opponents have come up with a novel argument: that some unexploded anti-aircraft shells that fell overboard in 1954 may be lurking on the floor of the bay and could be accidentally detonated by the dredging that will occur during construction. (Starting at the bottom of this page, the Department of Sanitation explains why this is not a significant issue.)

But really, I'm all for nixing the transfer station. Since nobody wants to live near such a place, I say we should just shut down all the waste handling facilities in the city and let people wallow in their own filth until they find a way to produce less of it.