“The legend recorded the pursuit by the natives of “Manetto,” the Evil Spirit, through Westchester county to the Sound shore, where, escaping to City Island, he stepped across to a safe retreat on Long Island by the use of the Stepping Stones, leaving the imprint of one foot which may still be seen upon a bowlder near Eastchester. He is said to have landed from his leap over the Sound in Flushing bay, on great rocks which were splintered by the impact. Having thus comfortably rid the mainland of that undesirable alien, the story leaves the burden on Long island of proving whether his Satanic Majesty skipped back again, over the gate of hell, to Manhattan, or still remains in the Borough of Brooklyn, playing the devil with metropolitan politics.”

- From Indian Paths in the Great Metropolis by Reginald Pelham Bolton.

About a month ago my wife and I passed a bicycle memorial on the side of Queens Boulevard. The bike was chained to a pole and the whole thing spray-painted white and covered in flowers.


I passed my second bike earlier this week, this time on the corner of Houston and LaGuardia. Like the first one, it was spray-painted white and covered in flowers. I did a bit of googling and found the Street Memorial Project.



It’s common enough to see flowers on the sides of highways, but the rate of automotive travel tends to quickly put these memorials in the background. Walking down the street is another matter. You get to spend time with someone’s sudden unexpected death.



I definitely feel some attachment to these two guys, Derek Lake and Asif Rahman, even if only in the barest, “it could have been me” sense. One guy made movies, the other guy made music. How different is that from writing every night and putting the stories in the mail? Both of them were probably thinking about something else when they were killed.

Is that the way it goes?