spontaneous brooklyn

A Brooklyn Walk.

2008-05-30T22:39:00.006-04:00

Walks with S is one of my most favorite things to do . . . especially in the spring, but more so in the summer. In early April, S and I went for a rather long walk all through Williamsburg, and ended up in the Lower East Side by way of the Brooklyn Bridge. I've been lazy, and I haven't posted these yet.

The walk started down by Williamsburg waterfront . . . it was a very bohemian scene with random groups of people just doing their own thing. The Williamsburg Bridge is far off in the distance.

These three people were all from separate groups somewhere off camera, yet they all sort of got close to the water, and to one another, forming their own little group of sorts, but all still very much in their own worlds.

The Empire State Building just looked so strangely out of place. It must have been interesting to be standing on this shore watching the building go up in the 1930s . . .

From the waterfront, we walked down to some shops. As S went into some, I stayed outside and noticed a group of people just hanging out on a rooftop.

As we crossed the bridge and headed into Manhattan, we saw a girl walking the opposite way towards Brooklyn with a tremendous bunch of balloons. We weren't the only ones who found the scene interesting. Notice the guy on the bike who had to turn around and take another look . . .

Big Brooklyn Sky.

2008-05-29T23:06:00.002-04:00

With lower Manhattan in the background. 1 Liberty Plaza is the black building next to the stop light.

Going home.

2008-05-29T23:03:00.004-04:00

I took S to work this morning, and on my way back to Brooklyn, I
caught a glimpse of my office building, 1 Liberty Plaza.

It is the black building on the right. You'll also notice the Brooklyn
Bridge to the left.

A fig tree grows in Brooklyn.

2008-05-25T22:51:00.001-04:00

Ground Zero.

2008-03-11T21:19:00.004-04:00

The sky seemed so serene tonight as I left work to make my way back to
Brooklyn.

This morning, the little TV news thing in the elevator showed a picture of people at a memorial for the Madrid bombing four years ago. Seven and a half years later, New York is still waiting for a memorial, and until then, I suppose we'll have to suffice with a huge hole in the ground.

The store around the corner. Part I.

2008-02-19T23:22:00.002-05:00

A trip to the store around the corner is just as much a social experience as it's a retail experience. A bottle of water, tissues, some Vitamin Water, inquiries about how my parents are, a 10 minute discussion on the "real problems" in the Middle East, why Eddie tries not to go near Ground Zero ("Man, me? An Arab? Walking around there? No way, man"), a discussion on which of the deodorants behind the counter actually smell decent enough to use (how about this one? no. this one? no. this one? yea, this isn't too bad. really? let me smell), and about how Eddie is getting a few of the guys in the neighborhood together in a van to drive out to a hospital in Manhattan to visit Fidel, a former regular in the store, who's now awfully sick, and who, Eddie and Sam are convinced I know (c'mon, you know, Fidel! Castro? No, not that Fidel! Fidel, he used to work for the MTA, he'd sit right there) and while I'm pretty sure I don't, they're so convinced that I do that I just say, oh, right, that guy, Fidel, and anyway, Eddie goes on, he wants to visit the guy and I'm just struck by the pure gregarious nature of the whole idea of a bunch of locals piling into a van to drive wildly through the streets of New York in search of a long lost friend who can certainly use a visit by some guys from the store around the corner.

Atlantic Avenue.

2008-02-18T21:56:00.001-05:00

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).

9th Street Station.

2008-02-17T17:48:00.002-05:00

I suppose if you asked my father, he'd say the same thing, so I don't know why I was got off guard. I guess it had to do with the fact that you'd only say something like that if you could remember a time when the neighborhood was grittier. It'd be something your parents would have told you ten or fifteen years ago (more, even), words of caution that were more like directives, but something that to me is just a sign of an older Brooklyn generation.

"That 9th Street station, it's dangerous. Don't get off here by yourself. Too many corners."

Seems sort of odd to say something like that now when 9th Street is the center of what's new and great about Brooklyn nowadays. But I don't think that was on the mind of the father I sat across on the Bay Ridge bound R train. He was talking to his teenage daughter, and while I wasn't necessarily listening to everything they were saying, his 9th Street Station comment just caught my ear in a way certain subway conversations do, and it made me think of my own father, and all the times I'd hear him say the same thing.

"You gotta be careful here, because, it's not a good station, you know what I'm saying?"

His daughter listened to his anachronistic advise, nodding her head every so often as the train came to a stop and all the new Brooklynites grabbed their hipster bags and buttoned their fashionista coats, some pulling out their knitted hats with the floppy ears--far from the threatening characters of a generation or two or three ago that would have given you all the just cause of offering the warnings this father was imparting on his daughter.