On Memorial Day, I mixed up my running routine by heading out of Prospect Park to the north, in a general Prospect Heights/Crown Heights direction. With spring migration winding down, I figured it was high time to start reacquainting myself with the less birdy sections of my borough (though as we know, birds are everywhere). And so I meandered through Grand Army Plaza, around the glassy Richard Meier building with the prestigious “1” address, then north on Underhill and east on Park Place. Eventually I hit the complicated intersection where Park Place and Washington and Grand avenues converge to define a small triangle. The triangle is surrounded by a construction fence decorated by multiple artists.

Naturally, I paused to snap photos of my favorite panels:

The impressive art wraps around to the Grand Avenue side of the triangle, but it was challenging to get good pictures there. This is what it looked like:

In case it’s not clear, this is, in theory at least, a sidewalk. You know – a place for people to walk, perhaps admiring the art (and the fallen blossoms) as they go.

This amount of sidewalk parking can only mean one thing: the presence of a police precinct. Sure enough, the former 80th Precinct is directly across the street. It’s now an NYPD administrative facility, but it remains a bastion of in-your-face parking impunity.

(Coming next Sunday: pictures and narrative from this morning’s running tour of the Audubon Project murals in Washington Heights.)