My friend Chris is a magician, he recently moved to Queens a few blocks away from where Houdini is buried. People leave all sorts of strange tributes on the grave. Playing cards, the silk and the key that were left have obvious resonance with the master magician. The rocks appear to be a custom in this Jewish cemetery. Leaving your business card is a bit tacky. But probably the most inappropriate object must be the tiny witch’s broom. If anything, Houdini was a foe of spiritualists and such.

Notice that the death date of his wife was not carved. Bess Houdini died on February 11, 1943, 17 years after her husband, in Needles, California, aboard an eastbound train traveling from Los Angeles to New York City. She was not permitted to be interred with her late husband at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York because she was a gentile. She is interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Snakes consuming each other in some mystical embrace, hmmm. Society of American Magicians The website lists his precidency from 1917-1926. Someone has chipped away the 6 and pencilled in 7.

The last trick and the Joker is on top.

This was one of my favorite pieces from Swoon’s show opening, last night at Deitch Projects in Long Island City.

Swoon had help from 75 collaborators in putting the show together, and the result of all that collective labor is spectacular. Get to the gallery before sunset. It is best in natural light.

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea

Saint Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in Ridgewood, Queens serves English, Polish and Spanish speaking parishioners.

Technical data: Electric-keyboard chime of 13 bells – Pitch of heaviest bell is D# in the middle octave – Transposition is nil (concert pitch) – Keyboard range: D#– / —- – The whole instrument was installed in 1925with bells made by Meneely/Wvlt
Chime (1) – a musical instrument consisting of at least 8 tower bells arranged in a diatonic (or partially chromatic) series, and upon which tunes can be played by some means, but with too few bells to be called a carillon.

Myrtle Avenue, Ridgewood, Queens.

Linden Hill cemetery viewed through chain link fence in Grover Cleveland park, Rigewood, Queens.

These leaf-cutter ants live under plexiglas, and their leaf delivery guy didn’t come the day I was there. A steady stream of hopeful ants came through the plexi tube into the bin, where the leaves usually are. They left disappointed, one escaped.

Costa Rican leaf-cutter ants doing what they like to do best.

www.queensmuseum.org/panorama/about.htm

I uploaded this full size panorama of Lower Manhattan so my neighbors can have fun finding their own apartment building.

Full Size