I wonder if any one else saw anything, or if there is a way to explain the siting away?

Every week we go grocery shopping at Fairway, and every week I see this weird little building opposite the Fairway. I don’t know if it has a name or what it is, but it freaks me out. All sorts of things adorn the walls on the front of the building, including a fish head and a model of the twin towers. Maybe it’s just somebodies house, I have no idea.

The cemetery is the final resting place for some 600,000 people. Among them are some very important historical figures, such as Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of the single-wire telegraph and co-developed Morse code) and Wizard of Oz actor Frank Morgan.

There are also some eerie stories associated with the cemetery. Take Mabel Douglass, for example. She was the first dean of the New Jersey College for Women. In 1933 she disappeared on Lake Placid. 30 years later her body was found at the bottom of the lake, petrified and supposedly perfectly intact. I’m still unclear if she supposedly haunts the graveyard, or if it’s just an interesting story.

Ghost tours are given yearly, and, although photography is not allowed, eerie images have appeared in photographs… I’m really upset I missed this. I would love to have taken a tour of the cemetery, there most be a ton of interesting history there.

I saw this article about a surveillance camera and it made me think “Is there a whole surveillance system setup around Brooklyn?” This particular camera can be found on Fulton Street, between the north end of Henry Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. They were alerted to it’s attention when the bulb on the top flashed to take a picture.

The post indicated that maybe it was part of a Brooklyn “Ring of Steel”, a system of cameras used to watch out for “terrorists activity.” Others think it’s just a red light camera. Who knows for sure. Just remember Brooklyn, Big Brother is watching you.

The male toadfish’s mating call is now the chief suspect (but is it a toad or a fish). To attract mates, it produces a sound similiar to a foghorn. I can’t imagine a fish making a foghorn sound…that seems strange. The toadfish’s spawning season is from April to October.

The toadfish

Andrew Bass, a Cornell University professor of neurobiology and behavior, tested the toadfish theory himself and disagrees that they are the source of the noise.

“I placed an underwater microphone into the water at several locations off of Pier 69 and heard no signs of toadfish sounds,” Bass told me, sticking to his story. “It is highly unlikely that any of the noise that residents are complaining about have their origins from fish.”

So what’s causing all the noise, then? This mystery may never be solved…

The story of the old, rusting submarine near Coney Island is a long and interesting tale. It begins in 1951 with the Italian Line cruise ship Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria weighed in at 29,100 tons and had a capacity of about 1,200 passengers and 500 crew. At the time it was considered to be one of the safest ships in the world. If I ever build a ship, I will never claim it to be the “safest ship” in the world, that’s just asking for it.

The Andrea Doria ran into trouble (literally) in 1956. In extremely foggy weather on the North Atlantic off Nantucket the ship collided with a Swedish liner bound for Gotheborg (the other ship’s name was the SS Stockholm). Some of the passengers and crew members were killed, but most survived. Unlike in the Titanic tragedy, other ships were in the vicinity to assist, as well as he SS Stockholm, which did not sink.

The Andrea Doria sunk with a large number of valuables onboard.

The Andrea Doria was known to be bountifully loaded with such diverse items as a $250,000 solid silver statue of a mermaid; thousands of cases of liquor; tons of provolone cheese; 200,000 pieces of mail that the federal government would pay 26 cents a piece for; the ship’s bronze propellers, worth $30,000 each, paintings locked in air-tight vaults; industrial diamonds; the ship’s $6 million metal scrap value; passengers’ personal property left in several vaults and more.

A few years later, in 1963, a Brooklyn Navy Yard ship fitter named Jerry Bianco decided he was going to raise the Andrea Doria. Why let all that good treasure just sit at the bottom of the ocean, right? So, with no prior submarine building experience, he decided to build an “economy” sub. Named the Quester 1, the submarine measured fourty-five feet in length and was painted with yellow zinc chromate paint, the cheapest possible. His plan was to fill the ship with inflatable dunnage bags which would hopefully raise the ship to the surface.

The sub was ready to launch in 1971. Crowds and local media were gathered for the launch at Coney Island Creek. Bianco’s daughter even broke a bottle of champagne across the bow before a giant crane lowered the craft into the creek. The crane operator, lowering the sub into the water before allowing water ballast into the craft, caused the sub to turn over and sink. Embarrassing! Biano later refilled the ballast and tethered the sub, but he was never able to return to the project and had lost his financial backing. The ship remained docked there until 1975, when a storm washed the boat ashore. It’s still there, to this day.

The rusty submarine is still there, to this day. If you want to see it for yourself, it’s just west of the Home Depot on Cropsey Avenue.

I wonder why someone would take the time to make a fake UFO video. I mean, what are you going to get out of it, especially when it looks this bad.

Yes, Brooklyn has packs of feral parrots flying around…I had no idea. I have yet to see and any of them, but this article from the Washington Post indicates they can be found around Greenwood Cemetery. Thought to be escapees from pet shops, these parrots have grown in number and prospered. There are many stories about how they got here, and Brooklyn Parrots, a website dedicated to protecting the wild birds, had further information:

More than 60,000 wild parrots of this type (Myopsitta Monachus) were shipped from South America to the U.S.A. during the 1960s and early 1970s. Why so many? Well, the Argentineans had just spent 10 years trying to wipe these parrots out. In fact, a government-sponsored program managed to kill more than 400,000 of them in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But in the mid 1960’s, someone had a bright idea: instead of killing them, why not ship them to the U.S.A. and make a few extra dollars? And thus did the great influx begin.

The site also speculates as to why there are so many in Brooklyn. A shipment of the birds was reportedly accidentally released at Kennedy Airport in the late 1960’s. Can you imagine being the guy who accidentally opened a crate of parrots and having them all fly out at you, circle around, and then disappear over the horizon? The website also goes in to more detail about finding the parrots for yourself:

If you’re interested in seeing the birds, your first stop should be Brooklyn College. Take the #2 train (7th Avenue IRT) to the end of the line, walk 1 block Southeast on Hillel Road, and you’ll be at Campus Road. On an average day with no subway troubles, you should be able to make the trip from anywhere in midtown Manhattan in an hour or less.

I’m certainly going to make this trip.

Located on Bergen Street and Flatbush, the Pintchik Oracle is a billboard on the side of Pintchik’s Hardware. Across the street from the hardware store is a phone mounted on a wooden box with a sticker attached that says “Come With Questions… Leave With Answers.”. People are encouraged to pickup the phone and ask the oracle a question. The oracle (billboard) then displays an answer to the question.

The oracle is actually man located somewhere inside Pintchik’s Hardware, manning the answering machine. Using a laptop he types in what is displayed on the billboard. Sure, we may know how he does it, but that doesn’t explain who the oracle is. Also, what’s the point? Why would this wise oracle associate itself with a hardware store in Brooklyn?

Well, all signs point to the oracle being Jonathan Safran Foer (see here and here for more information), but no one knows for sure. That also doesn’t explain why a hardware store would be associated with an oracle who doles out wisdom to passersby. The owner of the hardware store, Mr. Pintchik, had this to say:

Mr Pintchik refuses to take any credit for the oracle’s arrival in Brooklyn. ‘You know,’ he says, deadpan, ‘we’re this crazy hardware store that’s been around for 95 years, and the oracle has been around for thousands of years, and we were just blessed that the oracle appeared on our building. We don’t know why it’s here. It’s a phenomenon. We just accept it.’

Weird. Recently the oracle went dark, so I’ll have to drive by and see if it’s back up. I hope the oracle is OK…

Located on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. is a one stop shop for all your superhero needs. Signs on the outside advertise everything, from costumes to “invisibility”. They have everything a superhero could ever need to fight crime including grappling hooks, monkey cyborg parts, and helium gum (to change the pitch of your voice, of course).

Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. was one of the first weird experiences I had in Brooklyn. I just thought maybe it was as costume store or something. Researching further, however, reveals that Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. isn’t really a superhero supply store, at all! The store is just a front for 826NYC, a non-profit creative writing center for kids. All of the store’s proceeds go directly to 826NYC. The idea is that children would much rather receive tutoring in a superhero supply store, as opposed to being tutored in a plain, boring environment.

Dave Eggers (most notably known for his book Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis) is the man behind the operation. Mr. Eggers runs a similiar store in San Fransico based around a pirate theme. In fact, there is a whole 826National non-profit organization, which also includes 826LA, 826 Seattle, 826 Chicago and 826michigan.