If you want to get a running start on the Dollar Stroll or just pick up some stuff for dinner, then you might want to hit the inaugural Thursday edition of the Clark Farmer’s Market today. The Thursday market is, of course, held at the same location as Saturday’s – along 43rd Street between Baltimore and Chester – but with special work-friendly hours of 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

And don’t forget that the “A” section of the park (between Chester and Baltimore) is scheduled to open June 16.

Here are a few photos from yesterday’s May Fair at Clark Park.

If you have reveled in telling everyone who cared that the Charles Dickens statue in Clark Park was the only one in the world, these might be the worst of times.

A second Dickens statue, which disappeared some 40 years ago, has been fixed up and placed in Centennial Park in Sydney.

The author famously told his family that he wanted no public commemorations or testimonials. No statues. No buildings named for him. The Little Nell statue, commissioned in the late 19th century garnered accolades in public exhibits until settling into Clark Park in 1901 and there it remains, despite several attempts to move it to more prominent spots in the city.

The Sydney statue shows a contemplative Dickens holding a quill and scroll. The Telegraph newspaper reported last month that the statue was also commissioned in the late 19th century, but was removed in 1972 because of vandalism. Somewhere in transit the head was damaged and the statue was placed into storage until the company housing it went bankrupt.

The statue went missing until Sandra Faulkner, the president of the New South Wales Charles Dickens Society, began a public search for the statue in 2006.

“I received about three calls over the course of a few days from people who didn’t want to give their names but who knew the statue and knew where it was,” she told The Telegraph.

The statue turned up a year later in a private garden about an hour outside of Sydney.

Stonemasons spent the last four years making a new head, quill, scroll and finger for the statue.

The statue was replaced last month just in time for the novelist’s 199th birthday.

The Freinds of Clark Park has a new website. Brian Siano said in an e-mail today that the new site is designed to be more of a community discussion site than the old site. The site also offers the ability to share content on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Here’s a sneak peak: