This is the hill atop Owls Head Park – aka Bliss Park.  It’s a natural hill that’s part of the glacial ridge left behind from the last ice age.

It is also the scene of the fiery death that a homeless man met late in December of 2008.

It was a cold and windy night atop the hill, and he was apparently trying to keep warm by way of numerous candles lit up around him when the wind caught a flame and ignited the man himself.

No word on how the wind didn’t just blow the candles out like it would have on just about any other day…

This is the Pearl Room.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about the food there and yet I have never tried it due to the blasting sounds of techno music that I hear coming from it whenever I pass it – call me crazy, but blasting techno and sit down food just don’t jive with me.

Anyway, the Pearl Room is a double store front restaurant that sits on a slope with traffic running from right to left in front of it.

On November 1, 2008 Mousa Alijahmi, 17, was working a shift parking cars as a valet when he pulled up a minivan for a customer who was leaving the restaurant and then hopped out to move another car.

He apparently didn’t put the minivan in park and left it in reverse instead – apparently.

When Alijahmi noticed the minivan moving slowly in reverse he was on the passenger side of the minivan.  The high school track star and body builder ran in between the minivan and a parked car to try and stop the minivan from slowly going uphill in reverse.

Alijahmi never made it back into the driver seat of the minivan and instead found himself crushed between the minivan slowly going in reverse uphill and a parked car.

Let me repeat this again, the 17 year old valet who was a star runner was crushed by a minivan going UPHILL SLOWLY IN REVERSE when he tried to run in between it and a parked car – maybe some eight feet or so.

I recall NYPD fliers posted against the trees outside the Pearl Room looking for any witnesses to such an obscure and almost unimaginable accident, and I guess there were none for this has always been labeled an accident caused by Alijahmi’s own mistake.

Very sad circumstances all around and yet the given circumstances surrounding the event still don’t make sense to me.

This home looks like many other homes in Bay Ridge and while the exterior shows recent renovations, what it doesn’t show is the reason why…

Early on the morning of February 6, 2007 a space heater set off a fire that killed two young children were unable to escape from.

Aya Khawatini, 4, and her sister Fatin Lazhir, 2, were not as fortunate as their two other young sisters and older relatives.

While some things in life are hard, the death of one’s child must be the hardest.

I can only hope that this very unfortunate instance is one of those things that happen for a reason and that their family has been blessed in many ways since such a tragedy.

This is a club called Nox.  It’s located on 4th Avenue between 93rd and 94th Streets.  It is only the latest incarnation of many guido clubs at the location, which was once owned by a guy who killed a guy.

I believe that it was called Club Turqoise at the time of gore.

In any event, early in the morning on an April day in  2002,  Darninka Rachamin got into his Ferrari drunk, and sped down towards the Belt Parkway along 4th Avenue.

Within five blocks Rachamin had the Ferarri up to 100 mph, and unfortunately struck Howard Mazariegos here at the intersection of 99th and 4th Avenue.  Mazariegos was struck so hard that he leg was severed completely, and he died.

If my memory serves correct from the news that day, the Ferrari didn’t come to stop until two blocks later when it ended up running into a cement bench in Cannonball Park.

Rachamin was held on $1,000,000 bond, and ended up taking a plea to 2nd degree manslaughter – receiving seven to 20 years in state prison.

Rachamin almost escaped his prison sentence by a loophole in the NYS prison system, and had sought an early release so that he could be deported to freedom back to his native Israel.

Thankfully the NYS prison system listened to the Mazariegos family and denied Rachamin’s request for early release, leaving Rachamin to rot in prison for several more year.

If you drink, don’t drive – it’s that simple!