8 Mile Brooklyn Hike; Greenwood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Dinner

We'll be meeting deep in Brooklyn, at 25th St and 5th Ave, outside the Greenwood Cemetery and one block East of the 25th St stop of the R train.

There will be no vaccine requirements for this hike, neither for the hike itself nor for dinner afterward.

Stay at that corner and don't go to the big gothic gate until we have assembled the group. We'll do a zig-zag course of several miles through the hilly cemetery (click for pictures), after which we'll walk out and over to Prospect Park, and do several more miles there.

We'll try to find the following sites:

• two brothers, buried side by side, killed fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War
• Louis Bonard, patron of the ASPCA
• a monument to the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, where the British prevailed except that George Washington managed to retreat to North Manhattan with most of our army intact
• the status of Minerva, goddess of war, saluting the Statue of Liberty in the distance
• Leonard Bernstein's grave
• Clarence MacKenzie, a 12-year-old drummer boy, Brooklyn's first Civil War casualty, killed by friendly fire
• The family plot of Elias Howe, who patented the sewing machine
• Varian Fry, a Gentile who forged papers allowing 2,000 Jews and anti-Nazi figures to flee Vichy France (there are no stones lying near his grave, so if you want to leave one, bring it from home)
• Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph
• Charles Feltman, a German immigrant who invented the hot dog in Coney Island and built a giant business out of it

We'll finish up at the F/G subway stop at 7th Avenue and 9th Street, Brooklyn, after which those interested can come to a delicious and affordable Vietnamese dinner at a restaurant that does separate checks. Note that we will be ending 1.4 miles from where we began, so if you drive you can get back to where we started by taking the F/G one stop toward Manhattan, getting off at 4th Ave, then take the R back to 25th St.

There are bathrooms at the beginning, halfway, and at the restaurant. Other than that, we go 4 miles at a stretch with no bathrooms. There aren't even suitable bushes along the way.

I expect we will be reaching the end and starting dinner at about 7:00pm.

For the trip home, you can take the F/G train, which will be at 7th Ave & 9th St, about 30 feet from the restaurant. If people get lost, it just isn't practical to go looking for them. So it's important that you be able to cope if you do get lost. Attendance is free, and by attending, all participants agree to a release waiver that basically gives up any right whatsoever to sue, to the fullest extent possible by law. You can read the current draft of this waiver (here).