Atlantic Avenue.

After not leaving the apartment for two days due to a terrible cold--granted, it could have just been the flu, but since I finally got around to getting a flu shot for the first time a few months ago, I'd like to think not--S and I went exploring yet another part of Brooklyn that was probably the last place you'd ever want to be when I was growing up . . . Atlantic Avenue. I'll admit to last having really been around there to wander around the cavernous antique shops on boring Saturdays when I'd just want to get lost in Brooklyn, and well, maybe more recently to go to Bark, a shop that S just simply adores, and, to be completely honest, I sort of do, too. I mean, how can you not like a shop that has crazily expensive throws and rugs on the floor for people (and resident cats) to just walk all over--or, if you're one of the said resident cats, nap lazily whilst shoppers poke around. While I can't really get too into the girly stuff (ok, fine, I do enjoy watching S as she serenely browses the selection), I pretty much love the culinary tools they have there, especially that Italian knife with the name I can't remember, and the one I really couldn't find on the internet, which, I suppose, makes it the type of thing one would find at Bark, but I digress. I couldn't afford the knife anyway. But I will say this, Bark was closed today, and while S sort of suspected that it would be, we still used the opportunity just be outside and take our chances with the threatening clouds that seemed to stalk Brooklyn all day.

I should start a little bit earlier, though, because when I think about it, after not being outside for two days, we made up for lost time. We took the R train to Union Street, walked over to the Commerce Bank on 5th Avenue (whenever I go to Commerce Bank with S, she always asks when I'll start using Bank of America--a timeless discussion that I might save for a posting about banks some other day), then we walked in the direction of BAM with the thought of seeing a movie, but we missed all the showtimes, and considering the weather, we didn't want to wait another two hours, so we kept walking, this time along Atlantic Avenue, and then, well, there you have it.

There were a few stores that caught our eyes, one which was just a men's clothing store, rather an obscenely expensive men's store, but with the look and feel of that classic men's shop of yesterday, right down to the musty smell and the classic well-worn door knobs and locks and uneven wood floors and the disinterested sales clerk (no wait, that's not right), and some out of place people wandering through the tiny spaces fondling fabrics here and there--did they read about this place in some magazine?--but never buying anything. A rosary caught my eye, at first, for it's aged looked, but then for the tiny little handwritten price tag indicating that such a nice little item, so casually hanging off a thumb tack pushed into the wooden frame of a display case, would run the buyer 85 dollars, and then I thought back to all the rosaries I'd ever owned (and to the ones my parents own) and thought, surely, those would run hundreds of dollars, or what of one direct from Jerusalem and made of olive wood and that would hang in my bedroom for years as a wonderful reminder of the person who bought it for me (that, of course, being S). Anyway, the shop was interesting, and the items all rather nice and the details just so, but then we moved on . . .

A yoga store?

Sure, I guess that fits into all of this, and what a large and beautiful space, and, really, we're still on Atlantic Avenue? Ah, how times have changed, and to be honest, I'm glad they have. And yes, it was a yoga store, perfect in all sorts of ways, especially down to the entrance with it's French doors that seem to be a screening method to see you actually do yoga--and I clearly do not, since my shoulders sort of brushed the sides of the narrow doorway, which seemed so out of place for a store that was rather airy and spaced out. Now, I can't say anything really jumped out at me in this place aside from the funky looking yoga attire and the Copa Soaps (Beekman's?) that I so throughly enjoy . . . the very ones sold at the Union Square Christmas shops. Funny, I've never seen those soaps sold anywhere else, but sure enough, I find them in this yoga place. I can't remember the name of the place, though I'm sure S does, but I'll never forget the tale of rebellion S told me as she went through the yoga store's wares, but it's her story, and I won't share it here, but suffice to say, some people take their yoga symbols seriously (so says the boy who was just writing about rosaries).