City Island: Part Two

Lately I've been thinking a lot about our trip to City Island nearly a year ago. I recently revisited the photos I took and have since brought it up multiple times in conversation—I can't seem to get it out of my mind. I posted about the wonderful signage on the island last year, but never followed up with a full recap. Before I go again—real soon, hopefully—I wanted to make sure I fully documented my first trip.

City Island is an island on the western edge of the Long Island Sound, and is part of the Bronx. It's a weird and wonderful place that feels part New England seaside village, part New York City and part like nowhere I had ever been or have been since. The main industry on City Island used to be sail-making, but now its probably tourism, and most of the operating businesses we came across were seafood restaurants. There's also a diner, several bars, a Nautical museum, seaside cemetery and adorable New England-style houses alongside a lot of run-down, abandoned-looking places.

The City Island Diner is completely adorable, and was our first real destination after walking from the northern tip of the island. The food was excellent, although they do close in the middle of the day so go early. Right down the street from the diner is the Nautical Museum, which was a complete delight. The museum guides were all incredibly friendly and adorable—and if I'm remembering correctly, three out of the four people we encountered were named Barbara.

Down the street and around the corner from the museum is the Pelham Cemetery, which has a wonderful, arching iron gate that was—much to my disappointment—closed and locked. The cemetery is pretty small, though, so you can see a lot just by walking the perimeter. It looked very well-maintained and has beautiful views of the water.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the island—dreaming of owning a cedar-shingled home, drooling over vintage signage, trying to catch a glimpse of the water over the fences that line the shore and peeking into cluttered junk shops. We creeped on a house that appeared in the Royal Tenenbaums, and found out that City Island is a pretty popular filming location for television and movies (A Bronx Tale, Butterfield 8, Margot at the Wedding, Law & Order).

I saw a few adorable (stray?) cats wandering around, ate fried shrimp for the first time at Johnny's Reef, drank at a bar for free with true City Island locals, visited a diner, museum and a cemetery (the holy trinity)—it's no wonder that I want to go back so badly.

City Island: Part One

Prospect Park

All week long the weather forecast for Sunday called for "torrential" rain, so we didn't really make any outdoor plans. That forecast turned out to be nearly 100% wrong, however, so we ended up spending a large portion of the day in Prospect Park. It was muggy and hot but brilliantly sunny—something this Ohio girl has learned to cherish—and we made our way through the park slowly, without any real agenda.

Something I noticed right away was how green everything was, especially since it had rained the night before.

Like Central Park recently

, Prospect Park is filled with every imaginable shade of green—from the lightest mint to the darkest emerald, you can see the entire spectrum in just one scene.

I think I was most surprised/delighted, however, to find the portion of the lake by the Boathouse entirely covered in duckweed. The whole surface was moving ever-so-slightly, but mostly looked like a solid, bright green plane on which various bottles, sticks and one juice container had come to rest. It was a surreal scene and I had to poke the surface with a stick just to mentally confirm that the lake still existed underneath all that green.

The Boathouse is such a beautiful building—nearly torn down in 1964—and the adjacent bridge is my favorite in the entire park. We saw some really awesome-looking birds, one of which appeared to be, somewhat impossibly, standing on the surface of the lake, but as we got closer we realized it was actually just standing on a log that had obscured by the duckweed. It also seems impossible to me that I took very similar photos just a few months ago during our snow day—when the surface of the lake was similarly obscured, but by several inches of ice and snow.

Cypress Hill Cemetery

Two weekends ago, JMP and I decided to meet for diner breakfast (as we do) and I suggested that we explore a cemetery afterwards (as we also do). I had evening plans in Brooklyn and I'd been wanting to see more of the Queens/Brooklyn cemetery belt ever since I saw Houdini's grave almost a year ago. A quick look at the map shows more than 11 separate named cemeteries in the stretch between Bushwick and Kew Gardens.

I've always been easily overwhelmed by choice, but recently I found out that two of the Fox sisters are buried in Cypress Hills. There were actually three Fox sisters—the younger two convinced the older one that they were able to communicate with spirits and thus became instrumental in creating the Spritualism movement. Although they eventually confessed to making it all up, Spritualism had caught on and all modern-day psychics (and those that love them) have the Fox sisters to thank.

Margaret and Kate Fox are buried in section 3 of Cypress Hills and, along with a photo of their indistinctive headstone, that's all the information we had. Cypress Hills is a beautiful cemetery, but their signage is a bit lacking and we wandered for some time searching for section 3 before we broke down and asked a security guard for a map. The sections are pretty large, but JMP spotted the Fox sisters' grave with barely any trouble at all, like a total rockstar. The headstone is really difficult to read, and even harder to photograph but it says "Fox Sisters, Mediums of the Advent of Modern Spiritualism," followed by their names and dates of death.

Cypress Hills is very large—we only covered about a fourth of it before it was closing time. It's a really beautiful place and is very well-maintained. There are a lot of new plots mixed in with the old and a lot of people were tending to graves while we were there.

Although we felt perfectly safe, we got the impression that Cypress Hills might not have always been in such good shape. A lot of the mausoleums had been bricked- or cinder blocked-shut, which I don't think I've really seen before. One of my favorite parts of any cemetery is finding headless/limbless statues, and there were some great ones at Cypress Hills. At one point I spotted one and ran over to it as I exclaimed "OooOoh! Something headless!" which if you know me, probably doesn't seem odd at all.

Cypress Hills has some really excellent directional signage (excellent in design, not necessarily usefulness), as well as some really great examples of tombstone typography. There were so many great examples of "Rest in Peace" stones that I lost count, which stood out to me since I've often wondered how that phrase became so synonymous with tombstones when I rarely see it used. A part of Cypress Hills is also a National Cemetery that looks like a little Arlington—rows and rows of identical white stones laid out like dominoes.

I would definitely go back and explore more of Cypress Hills, and the rest of the cemetery belt. It was fun searching for a specific stone, and even more rewarding that we found it—maybe we had a little bit of help from Margaret and Kate Fox.

365 Project: Days 162-168

162/365: Cupcakes from co-workers for breakfast and a friend lunch at Beer Cheese.

163/365: JMP and I met for diner breakfast + explored a wonderful cemetery // It was a perfect night for Celebrate Brooklyn, where we saw Lucius and ate some incredible food.

164/365: We spent a lazy Sunday exploring Governors Island, peeking into abandoned buildings, lounging on the lawn and eating Mister Softee.

165/365: My favorite thing to come home to: a package containing new shoes (that fit perfectly and that I love dearly already—look at those pinstripes!).

166/365: I met Jim and Katie for dinner at John's pizza and walked by this sign that I've been admiring and coveting—that stained glass!

167/365: This Queen.

168/365: We went to see Jurassic World (in imax + 3D), which I absolutely loved. It made me want to add a dinosaur bone to my bone collection and buy an "original" Jurassic Park t-shirt.

Outdoor Art

Sometimes I don't really "get" large-scale installation art, and sometimes I find it downright annoying—but there's something about actually living in New York that has softened my view on public art installations. Maybe it's the novelty of seeing a familiar space in a different way, or maybe it's just fun for me to have new things to photograph. I still think Kolonihavehus is still my favorite piece that I've seen this year, but I've found myself enjoying similar exhibits around the city more and more.

Recently I had some time to kill so I walked around Madison Square Park, where the new Teresita Fernández installation, Fata Morgana had just opened. Described as "the Conservancy’s largest and most ambitious outdoor sculpture to date," the sculpture consists "of 500 running feet of golden, mirror-polished discs that create canopies above the pathways around the Park’s central Oval Lawn."

At first glance they are deceptively simple and kind of underwhelming. Taken individually, they're just oddly-shaped, overhead mirrors. The joy comes in taking in the installation as a whole—when layered and stacked, they're quite beautiful and surprisingly mesmerizing. I recommend walking the entire oval—the effect changes dramatically with every angle, and I would imagine, time of day.

Every summer, Governors Island has different art pieces scattered throughout the lawns. My first time on the island there was a hut made from milk jugs and I'll always be sad I missed out on the Planet of the Apes-like Statue of Liberty sculpture. However, this year's umbrella-and-hubcap-and-bicycle-wheel piece might be my favorite one yet. The bright colors were really incredible with the midday sun shining through and I love anything that grants me a perfectly-framed peek of skyline—just don't ask me what its all supposed to mean.

Governors Island

When it looked as if this past weekend's weather was going to be very pleasant and summery, I knew I wanted to do something worthy of the sunshine. We decided to go to Governors Island, which is just about the most summery thing you can do in New York that doesn't include laying on a beach.

I feel as if I say this about everything—but it's true about most places—no matter how many times I go to Governors Island, I see something new. I love laying on the lawn, checking out the new art pieces and soaking in the view of lower Manhattan that somehow never gets old.

My very favorite part of the island, however, is the history. Once used for military and defense purposes, the island is littered with remnants of its past, all in various states of decay or restoration. We spent a great deal of time walking the perimeter of the island, peeking into any window we could. Most of the buildings are closed to the public and most windows and doors are locked, but you can see a lot just by snooping a bit.

From what we could see, the interiors reminded me a lot of the Ellis Island hospital complex, and even Eastern State Penitentiary. I love the multiple layers of peeling paint, institutional paint colors, exit signs, old radiators, elaborate moldings and decorative fixtures. One of the buildings even had a few large trees growing entirely indoors—the leaves pressed up against the window, struggling to get light but yet so green they barely looked real.

365 Project: Days 155-161

155/365: Pizza and plaid // We demolished scoops of sweet corn ice cream for dessert from Cones on Bleecker (Brazil's favorite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

156/365: A lazy Saturday ended with a stroll through the new art installation in Madison Sq Park.

157/365: We were slightly bummed that this year's World's Fair Anniversary Festival wasn't as good as last year's (no Unisphere fountains, no NY State Pavilion tour), but a trip to Flushing-Meadows Corona Park is always fun.

158/365: I walked home and finally took a photo of this art I've been admiring on my daily walks.

159/365: After a bit of a slow start, I really started to get into this book, which I'm currently loving. Not so much loving how heavy it is to carry around (don't you dare bring up e-readers).

160/365: On my way to work I found yet another classic Greek coffee cup to add to my collection (with an actual coffee cup graphic!). This might be my favorite one yet.

161/365: My dad sent me these super cool Tiki-style sunglasses he bought at an estate sale in Ohio.

365 Project: Days 148-154

148/365: We went to see a movie and passed by this perfect pastry shop sign on Court Street in Brooklyn.

149/365: We spent a lazy Saturday strolling through Green-Wood and Prospect Park.

150/365: I (sort of) Kondo'd my drawers and it was strangely satisfying. It also made me realize that 90% of my wardrobe is black or grey (aka Mozart-colored).

151/365: My dad sent me a box containing all of my middle school / high school journals. Look at all of those pre-emoji stickers! Also, could I have made it any more enticing to read with that enormous "Private" label (followed by the oh-so-menacing "Keep your paws off!").

152/365: This majestic beast and I continued to plow through season 2 of Six Feet Under. She matches all of my furniture / bedding / clothing and that's not a coincidence.

153/365:  I walked to work through (a very green) Central Park and marveled at the incredible reflections in the Pool.

154/365: I met Jim for dinner in Brooklyn and on my way I walked by this mannequin massacre.

Central Park: Reflections

It finally stopped raining yesterday after three very wet days and warmed up a bit so I was happy to be able to walk through Central Park on my way to work. I walk home much more frequently than I walk to work, but there's something so magical about mornings in the park that I love so much.

Yesterday morning there was still a chill in the air so it felt like fall, but it very much looks like summer. Everything was still damp and green—so, so green. I don't think I've ever seen so many different shades of green in one place, it was so beautiful.

I entered the park at 103rd street and Central Park West and the reflections in the Pool were particularly wonderful. I've always loved the reflective views off the Pool, but it was incredibly still yesterday and mirrored the trees and surrounding buildings in a near-perfect way.

One of my favorite things about living in New York (instead of visiting) is seeing the city slowly come alive in the spring/summer and change with each new season. I've walked this same route through the park for over a year now and it always feels different.

Nashville: Hatch Show Print

The first thing my dad and I planned when we decided to go to Nashville was to take a tour of Hatch Show Print. Started in 1879 by the Hatch brothers, Hatch Show Print is a letterpress shop most famous for its concert posters for Johnny Cash, Elvis, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and pretty much everyone that has ever performed at the Grand Ole Opry or the Ryman Auditorium.

I have known about Hatch about as long as I have been interested in graphic design and I adore their style. They emphasize "preservation through production," which means that they do not add to their wood type collection and they use everything they have in their collection to create all of their posters. None of the design is done digitally—from a hand sketch, to the final letterpressed poster, computers are never a part of the process.

The tour wasn't much of a tour in the traditional sense, since you can see most of their one-room, glass-walled shop just by walking by. Hatch moved to its current space in 2013 when a custom shop was built specifically for them in the same building as the Country Music Hall of Fame (which Hatch has been a part of since 1992).

Pretty much everything in the shop is part of their collection and moved with them, including the shelves that hold the wood type (some of which are made of discarded printing blocks). The guides were informative and I learned a lot about the shop's history, which I find endlessly fascinating.

We then got to actually print our own poster (the orange type portion—everything else was pre-printed and each ink color takes 24-hrs to dry) which was unexpected and a great souvenir. Of course they also have a gift shop with actual souvenirs like posters, cards, t-shirts and mugs, in which I tried my best to restrain myself but still left with four posters, a t-shirt, a few postcards and—the holy grail of all souvenirs—a squished penny.

Green-Wood Cemetery

I just recently became a member of Green-Wood Cemetery, which is very much something that I would do. Everyone I've told is initially confused as to the benefits of being a member of a cemetery ("Do you get to be buried there?"), but it's something I've considered doing for a while. It ultimately just made sense financially—there's a tour I want to take that is essentially the same price as a membership, which includes one free tour pass—but I also just feel good supporting a place I love so much.

My dude actually lives about a block from Green-Wood (major pro) and on our way to Prospect Park on Saturday he mentioned that we could walk through Green-Wood "if I wanted," and of course the answer was "yes!" It was my first visit as an official member, which of course means nothing but it still makes me happy that I'm supporting the cemetery, even if it's in a very small way.

We walked through a part of the cemetery that I had never explored before—as much as I've been to Green-Wood, it's so big that I still haven't seen it all. Green-Wood is just so incredibly beautiful and picturesque, especially on a bright, sunny day like Saturday. We saw some wonderful statues (that dead-eyed girl will probably haunt me for the rest of my life), peeked into the mausoleums (added another Egyptian-style one to my favorites list and saw a great monument/mausoleum combo), and found some awesome headstones (Coffin!).

I can't really wrap my head around the fact that I was walking through a snow-covered Green-Wood just a few months ago, and that before I know it I'll be crunching through the fall leaves as I peek  inside the mausoleums on the annual open house tour.

Nashville: Signage

My favorite part of any city is usually the signage, and Nashville was no exception. My dad and I met in Nashville for a Memorial Day/dad's birthday father-daughter weekend trip, and we had a great time. The first store we went in was the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, which had an incredible sign that not only rotated, but included neon and a replaceable-letter marquee.

It was impossible not to be enamored with all of the neon signs downtown—cowboy boots, cowgirls, guitars, flying pigs. It's really hard to pick a favorite, but the flying pigs and the Hats/Boots cowboy were ones that had me majorly swooning. As with any proper sign, they looked great in the daytime as well as when they were lit up at night—the pigs even flashed in sequence to make it look as if they were really flying.

The signs aren't exclusively limited to downtown, of course, and there were great ones wherever we went in the city. Printer's Alley had a few really wonderful ones—neon and hand-painted. I'm not sure how many of the signs are original/vintage and how many are new, but even the ones that I suspect are new were still really beautiful.

I loved all of the western-style typography, but my very favorite sign was the one for the Dejà Vu Showgirls Gentleman's club. We drove by it a few times and when we finally walked by it I was so happy that I was able to get a picture of it in all of its neon-pink, fishnet-ed, classic-script glory.

365 Project: Days 141-147

141/365: I flew to Nashville to meet my dad for the weekend. We spent most of the night at Robert's Western World, drinking and enjoying a super awesome band. It was a perfect introduction (for me, my dad had been before) to Nashville.

142/365: We started a very busy day with a Hatch Show Print tour (and a squished penny, of course) and ended it with a trip to the Grand Ole Opry.

143/365: We got up early and (mostly) beat the insane rush at Pancake Pantry, where we had a really delicious breakfast—we both got pancakes, of course.

144/365: We said goodbye to Nashville and hit the road for an 8-hour drive to Ohio. We stopped to take a tour of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and saw a ridiculously beautiful sunset that seemed to last for hours.

145/365: I visited my old coworkers for lunch at 427 Design // My grandma, dad and I went out to dinner for my dad's birthday and back to my grandma's house for dessert. She's had these dishes and placemats for my entire life and I love them.

146/365: I flew from Ohio back to New York and went straight to work. When I got home I unpacked and took inventory of my souvenir haul. The two fortunes are from Elvis and Willie Nelson fortune-telling machines.

147/365: I missed Francesca's birthday on Tuesday, so we celebrated at lunch with enchiladas and a few gifts.

Cold Spring, NY

A few weeks ago—before we explored the cemetery or hiked through the Cornish Estate ruins—we explored a bit of the town of Cold Spring, New York. Cold Spring is a stop on the Hudson line of the Metro North Railroad, about 1.5 hrs north of the city, on the banks of the Hudson River.

It's an adorable small town, filled with antiques shops, an actual Main Street, a few restaurants, bars and coffee shops. The houses and brick buildings were almost all absurdly cute, with mansard roofs, porches, porthole windows and red doors. Cold Spring reminded me of other Hudson Valley towns I've been to or through—Tarrytown, Irvington, Ossining—but slightly less expensive.

I would have loved to explore the antique shops, but we had a full agenda and couldn't carry anything with us, which means I would have 100% found tons of things I couldn't live without.

The hiking trails are located really close to the center of town, and our hike through the highlands was incredible. Aside from the ruins, we saw so many rock sculptures that they began to look like little cities (or little people) and the views from the top are breathtaking. I might have complained (mostly in my head) about being tired on the trek up, or almost died of thirst (dramatic exaggeration) but the views of the Hudson Valley and beyond were totally worth it.

At one point we could even see the city—looking like a tiny, toy Emerald City—which is the best part about the Hudson Valley. You feel light years away from New York, but you're only a short train ride from home.

New York City Marble Cemetery

I recently posted photos from my visit to the New York Marble Cemetery, and mentioned that there is an un-affiliated New York City Marble Cemetery a few blocks away. The NYCMC is slightly more accessible than the hidden NYMC, and although the gate is normally locked, you can see it all from the sidewalk.

It's open once a month from May-October and it's a beautiful space to spend the afternoon. When I was there it was pretty crowded and in addition to people, the cemetery was filled with pigeons—in the trees, on the wires and on the headstones.

The NYCMC has headstones like a traditional cemetery in addition to underground vaults designated with flat marble markers. It also has a fantastic iron fence and gate, with a wonderful tombstone-shaped sign and arching letters. It's not as secluded as the New York Marble Cemetery, but it's a great place to spend the afternoon and have a picnic amongst hundreds of circa-1800s graves.

365 Project: Days 134-140

134/365: 15 of us went upstate to a house in Red Hook to celebrate Trent's Dirty Thirtieth birthday.

135/365: We went into town to replenish supplies and passed by this incredible 1920s diner.

136/365: We took a group photo by the barn before we left (wearing the great tanks that Alisha designed for us).

137/365: Mozart has been unimpressed with me never being home.

138/365: I wasn't feeling well so I went home from work early and watched Gilmore Girls for 10-hrs straight.

139/365: I took another sick day and hung out with these two weirdos all day.

140/365: Francesca brought me back a skeleton cat and the coolest squished penny from Old Town in San Diego.

New York Marble Cemetery

It's been more than a year since I went to the New York Marble Cemetery but I remembered recently that I'd never shared my photos. The "the oldest public non-sectarian cemetery in New York City" is open at least one day a month during warmer months and I happened to catch it on an open day last April.

The NYMC is hidden away down a little alleyway (marked by an incredible arched gate) and opens up into a courtyard surrounded by apartment buildings. There are no headstones—instead there are 156 below-ground burial vaults with the names of the interred carved in plaques embedded in the surrounding stone wall. Underground vaults were popular at the time due to health concerns over burying people who suffered from infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

There is also a New York City Marble Cemetery a few blocks away—which can get confusing—but despite basically sharing a name, the two are otherwise unrelated. The New York Marble Cemetery is available to rent out for parties and weddings (get married and buried!). There are a few benches, small statues, patches of flowers, potted plants and not much more—it's a really beautiful, open and peaceful place. It's almost easy to forget that you're in the middle of the Lower East Side.

Dead Horse Bay: Shoes + Bones

Like my first-ever visit to Dead Horse Bay, I returned home from my most recent trip with a backpack full of horse bones. Because I collect bones, I now consider this the mark of a very successful day. I mentioned in my first post that we found a lot of pieces that we considered keeping, but in the end we came back with only a few things. It's just as rewarding for me to take photographs of the treasures without needing to keep every cool thing we find, which my small apartment definitely appreciates.

My favorite part about Dead Horse Bay is the variety of things that you find. Everything is constantly getting churned up and spit out in different places, so it's a new experience every time you visit. In addition to the bottles, we saw tubes of paint, an iron, a record, bits of printed china, tires, a ceramic cow foot, a plastic duck toy, a bathroom scale, a tube of toothpaste, rusty keys (inside of a wallet), a cash register, roll of film, can opener, toilet seat and of course, a kitchen (or bathroom) sink.

At a place like DHB you start to notice similar types of items when you start seeing them over and over, and this time it was forks. I guess I didn't really see that many of them, in comparison to bottles, bones or shoes, but for some reason they really stuck out to me.

The second most prevalent type of trash at DHB (after bottles, before bones) is shoes. I haven't been able to find a good explanation as to why there are so many—maybe shoes take a particularly long time to decompose? There's something so sad about the shoes—the "old soles"—strewn about without their mates. They make me obsessively wonder who once wore them and what stories they would tell if they could.

The only things that came home with me (in addition to the bones and one jar) was the plastic duck toy and a few broken bottle bits. We talked about the duck ("Look at his jaunty little hat") while we ate our picnic lunch and I couldn't bear to throw him back. Now he sits in my pencil cup at work, where I can look at him daily and daydream about my next trip to Dead Horse Bay.