The free New Jersey transit fares (with a student ID and this coupon) continue until Sunday. Take advantage and see the Jerz -- here are some suggestions, and directions, from the Bwog Staff.

Medieval Times
Lyndhurst, NJ

Catch the 192 Bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and take it to Polito Ave. Then look for the giant castle.

This olde tymeie fortress is perhaps the best-known member of the knights-and-ale theme restaurant chain that started on the Spanish island of Majorca thirty-five years ago. Watch this badical intro movie. A regular ticket is a steep $55, but groups larger than fifteen get a sizable discount, and admission includes a two-hour show, a hearty, utensil free meal, and flagons of mead straight from the serving wench's pitcher.

Looking for a chance to wait forty minutes to get your neglected bike onto the McBain elevators, then ride many miles in the freezing cold? Read on, my friend.

Staten Island is probably foreign ground to the vast majority of Columbia students, and with good reason -- even on a good day, it's an unbelievable trek. However, it's often worth it to travel out there. If you're looking for weird and little-known places, well, Manhattan is no longer the place to find them. But Staten Island is a vast expanse of empty, unpopular, and abandoned wonders.

Case in point: the boat graveyard. Tucked away on a forgotten corner of the island's west shore is a swampy little plot of land where wooden and steel boats have been haphazardly rammed into the shore and left to decay. A continuous string of craft lets you walk hundreds of feet out into the water.

Photos and more narrative after the jump.

A Bwog daily editor reports on a distressing development in the world of tunneling:

A year ago, your correspondent made a bid for tunneling immortality. With sharpie in hand, I went in search of the Columbia tunnel system's holy grail--a Manhattan Project-era cyclotron rumored to be somewhere in the upper campus tunnel system.

It turns out that while the 'tron was in fact accessible from the tunnels (by way of an unnecessarily complicated although perhaps more adventurous process where you have to follow a tunnel under Mudd and hop over a wall...there was a great description on the old CU tunnels Wiki, which has mysteriously been taken offline), the thing itself resided on the first floor of Pupin--which is totally locked, unless you feel like going to the Pupin 1 men's room and negotiating the crawlspace between this heating duct and the ceiling.

So negotiate it I did. And what I found, readers, after squeezing myself between a couple of water conduits and dropping into a dank and long-abandoned janitor's closet, was a dungeon-like hallway of empty offices and industrial apparata--interesting, but hardly worth the Mission Impossible-like maneuver it took to get there. But an early-decade cleanup of rooms that had gone virtually untouched since the Manhattan project thankfully spared the building's main attraction (for tunnelers, at least): a single room containing a scattered mess of papers and scientific instruments, in the back left-hand corner of which sat a true piece of Columbia lore: the hulking, oblong outer shell of the cyclotron.

But this adventure is now all but impossible. On a recent visit to Pupin 1 (to use the men's room, actually), I found that a construction company had moved into the once-abandoned hallway; painting over the generations of tunneler grafitto, and occupying an empty office adjacent to the cyclotron room. It's hard to say if this is a short-term headquarters for the new science building at 120th and Broadway, or if the first floor is to be completely gutted and converted into usable space. From the looks of it, Turner hasn't moved in on the cyclotron's territory, but that's likely not important to adventurous Columbians: with people now working in Pupin 1, it looks like the 'tron is off-limits, and that a uniquely Columbian tradition will have to be put on hold.

Two Bwoggers report on a disturbing journey to the center of the mind...

Our reasons for doing Salvia had as much to do with irony as they did with recreation. Free of associations with the 1960s counterculture, the perfectly legal psychoactive escaped the social retrenchment our nation experienced during the 70s and 80s. So while Salvia gets you high on one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man, it also gets you high on contradiction: going by our current standards (you know, the ones that don't let you drink 'til you're 21), there is no conceivable justification for keeping this stuff legal. None. It's like hypocrisy you can smoke.

I, however, was a bit confused when my co-experimentalist first floated the idea. A visit to Wikipedia turned up the following information (here I paraphrase):

Salvia divinorum is a naturally occurring herb related to mint and capable of producing strong psychoactive effects for a short amount of time when smoked and inhaled. Its twenty-minute trip has characteristics of both weed and stronger drugs, like shrooms. Salvia's Latin name means "sage of the seers"; the word salvia is related to salve, used by the ancient Romans to mean "hello," "be well," and possibly ""care for a smoke?."

After digesting this new knowledge, I thought for a few seconds, reveled in the narcissism of enlightened drug use, and replied: "Sure, why the hell not?" After all, I was in need of a psychoactively novel experience, and I didn't see myself making it down to the Navajo Nation any time in the near future. So a few weeks later he and I, after pushing through throngs of hipsters and goths on St. Mark's Place and purchasing our wares in a seedy yet comforting headshop (Addiction NYC, for the curious), found ourselves loading surprisingly odorless, fine brown leaves into a knobby and voluminous bubbler.

So Park Slope is far away, but intrepid Bwog correspondents Maryam Parhizkar and Emma Jacobs made the trip and rediscovered their childhood. Remember a time before CC? Well, maybe this well help...

Before the semester really gets under way, you might want to stock up on some extra support. There's still time left to get down to the Superhero Supply Company at 372 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn's Park Slope.

There are not many places that would make us want to be 11 years old again. The Superhero Supply Co. is among the rare few. Stepping inside feels a lot like stepping into a well-crafted children's book, and no wonder. The whole place is the brainchild of author Dave Eggers, genuine fictionado and founder of McSweeney's.

Located at 5th and 5th in Park Slope of course, where all the writers live, the shelves of the superhero supply company are well stocked with lithium stun guns for that guy in your CC class, night vision binoculars for getting home from Butler and portable force fields—for just about anything, and sprayable intuition, for which the uses should be obvious.

Looking to pick up some summer reading? The woman at the desk of Partners and Crime, in the East Village, told Bwog reporter Emma Jacobs that Manhattan's bookshop scene's just not what it used to be--but we didn't believe her. You can still find some of the best bookshops around hanging in on Manhattan to serve every taste. Click here for a map of the bookshops, and happy browsing!

Three Lives & Co.
154 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village

Wooden shelves and red brick. This one's a classic, traditional bookshop in a cozy space in the West Village.

Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Bargain Books
34 Carmine Street, West Village

In an incredible corner of the Village, you'll find amazing prices on remainders focused around politics and art. Children's bookshop is next door. Also, the name is awesome.

Housing Works Used Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street, Soho

Beautiful Soho space sells used books and coffee, with proceeds going to help homeless New Yorkers living with AIDS. Great monthly concert series too.

Partners & Crime
44 Greenwich Ave

This place has exclusive mysteries and detective novels. The staff know their stuff inside and out.

Alabaster Bookshop
122 4th Avenue, East Village

Another small-scale classic with used books and rare titles. It has a cat and amazing bargain carts outside.

Those stuck in New York over the summer, fear not: there's plenty to do off the Island. In this installment of Bwog Adventures, Lydia DePillis takes you to the far reaches of Queens for some equine entertainment.

For someone who read as many Black Stallion books as I did as a kid, Belmont Park is a legend--land of endearing underdogs and grizzled grooms, somewhere off in horse heaven. It's actually in Long Island, just over the border from Queens. But that's far enough away to make an adventure, and I had some time during reading week on what just happened to be the opening day of the season.

I and two traveling companions, Rachel and CML, left at the leisurely time of 11:00 AM—races don't start until 1:00 PM—tripping across Morningside Park to the B train, which we took down to 50th, where we transferred to the E to Jamaica station. After casting about for a half hour in the chaotic shopping zone of Jamaica (beware instructions from friendly busdrivers) we finally caught an M110 going in the right direction, which we knew only because of the guy reading the racing form with pencils in his cap.

After a half hour traveling deep into the vastness of Queens, the bus deposited us and a handful of other track-goers on a curb next to a huge parking lot. Mounting a skybridge that took us to the grandstand, I gasped at the first sight of the expanse of green laid out below—at 1.5 miles, Belmont's dirt track is one of the longest in the country. On June 9, it will be ringed by screaming fans, possibly urging home the first Triple Crown winner in 29 years. OK, unlikely, but they'll still be screaming.

First-years, Bwog summons you from your groggy Sunday morning hangover. The air is warm and crisp, the sky is blue -- perfect for an afternoon outing to Staten Island.

Well, the destination is not so romantic (Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island is home to New York's refuse), but the journey. Oh the journey. The half-hour long (free!) ride on the Staten Island Ferry is calming and gentle, you can watch the city skyline and Brooklyn's bridges shrink against the horizon, as the Statue of Liberty and sleek Verrazano Bridge come into view.

The boat is always laden with camera-clicking international tourists and Staten Island commuters -- prime territory for people watching -- and travels from the ferry terminal downtown (get off at Whitehall St. on the R train-- the 1 doesn't run to South Ferry today) to the newly renovated terminal on "the Island", as natives call it. The area immediately around the terminal at St. George may warrant exploration, but Bwog reccommends staying only until the next ferry to Manhattan arrives. Buses to other parts of Staten Island are few and infrequent, and it is not exactly a walkable borough.

Ferries run every half-hour on the weekends; check the schedule before you set out.