today i had to get up early and help load in a show for my job at broadway cares/equity fights AIDS and i ended up being all done by 9:30am. i headed home and went to the farmer’s market down on skillman avenue in sunnyside (where i live) for the first time this season. i bought some green garlic, thinking it was leeks and ran into my friend tom and his dog.
it was daytime on a saturday, and i didn’t have anything to do. i decided to make the most of living in sunnyside and get on my bike and see some sights.
first stop was the queens library.
i had passed this place a bunch of times on the bus and i wanted to step inside and see what they had. the selection was limited but i decided to get a library card anyway. it’s really thick and makes my wallet too big. the only book i noticed and thought about picking up was Thalia: !Belleza!: Lessons in Lipgloss and Happiness - a book by thalia, the telenovella star - but unfortunately i didn’t have backpack on me and didn’t want to bike with it. (don’t worry, t, i’ll be back.)
across the street from the library on 43rd there was this awesome graffiti mural. it was on the side of nelson’s christmas shoppe - currently closed - and was awesome. here is a detail :
then i biked down greenpoint avenue to the cemetary. i snapped this shot of manhattan over the L.I.E.
cavalry cemetery was established in 1847 and now has over 3 million graves. it sits between the B.Q.E. and L.I.E. under the shadow of the kosciusko bridge.
this map would have been helpful if it were at the entrance i entered from, but alas it wasn’t until i biked across the mass of hilly death that i found this on laurel hill blvd. :
i see this cemetery everytime i take the B24 bus to and from williamsburg, but i’ve never been inside. that’s the kosciusko bridge in the background, again. the view from the bus is pretty cool too.
you can see manhattan behind a hill of graves :
look at these awesomely huge sepulchers :
here’s one up close - check out the easter bunny on the door :
this one was grown over with vines :
there was a little section of graves fenced off from the late 1700s (which was weird because the cemetery was established about 100 years later) and all the stones were really worn and difficult to read. strangely this stone was also in the enclosure. was it a joke?
this gravestone tells a sad story :
charles and maria drake lost two children at ages 12 and 20, in the late 1800s. then both passed about a decade later within two months of each other. it’s obvious that they buried their children initially and then when they were buried the text “also the above named…” was added. up close you can even tell the difference in etching.
my trek was very fulfilling. i saw a couple of people there - watering flowers, paying their respects - but ultimately it was quiet. just the roar of the highways. i biked back home and got some mango frozen ice from this cute little kid in front of the pizza place on 43rd ave. then i ran into my friend tom again. he was talking to two guys in front of his building so i stopped to say hi.
he knows a lot of people in sunnyside. i guess it’s because he has a dog that looks like an ewok so lots of people talk to him. i only know him and this guy peter with a little asian wife that lives downstairs. we have cigarettes together outside my building sometimes.
Tags: bike, cavalry, cemetery, sunnyside, sunnyside saturday, trek