Author Archives: lkewing313

Trusting your training

Posted on by
2

Getting ready for the New York City Marathon

The New York City Marathon is less than two weeks away.  That means I’m running reduced mileage, so that when I line up on the Verrazano bridge on November 2, my legs will be fresh and bouncy.

It also means I’m going a little crazy.

I know to expect a variety of physical symptoms to come and go over the next ten days: sniffles, odd twinges, inexplicable lethargy, shoes that just feel wrong.

Hardest to deal with, though, are the doubts.  Did I train enough? Did I train the right way?  Was I crazy to top out at long runs of 16-18 miles, when everyone else was going for 20 or even more?  Will my 53-year-old body hold up for 26.2 miles, or will the endless hill that is Fifth Avenue between 120th and 90th streets turn me into a shuffling, deeply ashamed, zombie?

Like many women in my cohort, I was a late-onset runner. I came up just behind the pioneering generation of women distance runners, and while girls cross country existed at my high school in the late 1970s, I wanted nothing to do with it: I was a debater and quiz bowler and student journalist, utterly uninterested in (even hostile to) sports of all kinds.

As a consequence, when I finally took up running in my mid-30s – and became serious about it in my 40s – I had no experience of training.  The idea that running more miles, even at a moderate pace, would eventually make me faster seemed absurd (it still strikes me as magical). I’ve since learned to accept, if not to entirely understand, the science of the various physiological adaptations that running at various paces for various distances produces.

The truly important lesson that I missed by not participating in sports during my high school and college years is the one about trusting your coach.  That lesson doesn’t come easily, or naturally, or comfortably in adulthood.  In fact, it sounds more than a little retrograde.  (A “Question Authority” button is pinned to the bulletin board behind me even as I type this.)  All the same, the only way to train for a marathon without actually running a marathon is to trust that your coach (real or virtual) knows what he* is doing.

On November 3,** I will return to my usual, skeptical self.  I’ll quote Gramsci about pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, etc. etc..  But until then, I’m setting all doubt aside.  I am blindly, completely, fervently, even desperately trusting Keith and Kevin Hanson and my training.

Because, really, what else can you do?

*I write “he” advisedly, because all of the marathon plans I can think of are by men.  Unfortunately.

**Just in time for Election Day, appropriately enough.

Fall migration: first blood

Posted on by
1

Bird watching in Prospect Park is not generally a hazardous occupation.  How, then, did I end up with a bruised and bloodied chin, abrasions on the palms of both hands, and second degree road burn on my right knee?

It started innocently enough, on one of the woodchip paths that splits off from the paved walkway along the Lullwater (such a gentle name!), sloping down to the water and then back up.  I was scanning the water for herons (unsuccessfully) and the trees and bushes for warblers (only slightly more successfully).  At the point where the trail rejoined the pavement – WHAM. It was as though someone or something had grabbed my foot.  I went down hard, leading with my chin, glasses flying off my face and skittering onto the grating of a storm drain.  (Mercifully, they did not fall in.)

The bucolic stillness of the Lullwater was broken by some truly vile curses.

I picked myself up and looked around.  I can’t be completely sure what happened, but let’s just say that strong circumstantial evidence points to a steel reinforcing rod, left over from a construction project and sticking out from the ground at more or less the spot where I went down, as the prime suspect.

Birder, beware

Birder, beware

Gingerly, I brought my hand up to the throbbing ball of pain at the bottom of my face. I was relieved to find my chin still there.  I was less relieved when I lowered my hand and saw that it was full of blood.

I speedwalked past the Boat House – locked tight, no park workers around – duly noting a black-crowned night heron perched on a snag in the Lullwater Cove.  A strange jostling sensation with each step had me worried that my chin might be fixing to fall off (worst case) or bounce itself into some painful and disfiguring angle (slightly less-worse case).

Out on the main road, I flagged down a park truck and got a wad of paper towels and directions to the nearest park maintenance office.  “They have a first aid kit there,” I was told.  I’m sure they do – however, at that moment, the first aid kit was securely behind locked doors.  The restroom was open, though, so I was able to clean myself up a little and inspect the damage as best I could in the prison-style, polished metal “mirror.”  Not only was my chin still there, it seemed to be quite firmly attached. And despite all the blood, there was no gaping wound that might require stitches.

So I did what any normal person would do under the circumstances, considering it was a beautiful fall day, the height of songbird migration, and the middle of marathon training to boot: I jogged along the woodchip path back to Center Drive, looking for warblers and thrushes.  I did have a moment of panic the first time I lifted up my binoculars to investigate something fluttering in the canopy.  I couldn’t see a thing: had I broken them in the fall?  Another small mercy – my binoculars were fine.  It was just that the eyepieces were covered in blood.

In praise of birding

Posted on by
Reply
grheron_brandohl

Green heron – photo credit to Brandohl Photography.

Not in praise of birds – though a photograph of a green heron (aka butorides virescens, Latin for “heron so tiny you could smuggle it home in your shoulder bag, and so cute you’ll want to, but you won’t, because it would be wrong”) illustrates this post – but in praise of the act of birding itself.  By “birding,” I mean walking slowly, ideally in a park or other natural setting, most likely with a pair of decent binoculars around your neck, and stopping frequently to investigate a flutter of wings in the canopy or underbrush, or locate the source of a particular song or call, or simply because a spot looks – or has the reputation of being – “birdy.”

I spend a considerable time running in Prospect Park, but it was only after I started birding again last March that I really got to know it.  Like most runners, I stuck pretty close to the main park drive.  If I veered off the road onto the dirt, I still generally paralleled the roadway.  I used familiar mile markers to gauge my pace, stopping only at drinking fountains (and for occasional bathroom emergencies).  With the exception of my Prospect Park Track Club teammates and a few other well-known fixtures of the Brooklyn running community, to whom I would wave (or occasionally run a partial loop with), I passed other runners in silence.

Birding is different.  In part that’s because birders move slowly, but it’s also, I think, because birders are an even smaller and more eccentric tribe than runners.  When we see one another, we almost always stop to compare our sightings and offer tips (“worm-eating warbler was working the lower pool half an hour ago”).  Sure, some of us are testy about off-leash dogs, but in my experience, birders as a group are almost absurdly friendly and helpful.  They also know the park really, really well.  Thanks to my birding colleagues, I now have a greatly expanded geographic vocabulary that takes in the Pools, Upper and Lower; the Lullwater; the Lily Pond; the Butterfly Meadow; and so on.  I am particularly proud to know which lamppost is the famous Lamppost 249 (to complicate things, it now bears a different number) and would be more than happy to point it out to you if you’re interested.

I’ve seen some great birds in the park, starting with the red-necked grebe that paid an extended visit in early spring, and including a prothonotary warbler so bright it seemed to glow, tail-wagging prairie warblers, diving ospreys and bobbing sandpipers.  I’ve watched our three green heron fledglings lose their baby-bird down and grow into streaky adolescence.

I’ve also seen lots of interesting non-bird stuff, and had some interesting non-birding conversations.  There was the couple having sex in a clearing surrounded by phragmites.  There was the (different) couple who became engaged by the Butterfly Meadow: I heard a woman crying, then laughing, then saw her holding up her hand so the light would catch the diamond on her ring finger while she cried/laughed.  There was the older man who works the night shift, goes home to take his tea, then heads to the park to walk – and who told me a long and improbable story about a chance meeting with a musician playing the bass, right here in the woods on the Peninsula, yes, right here, no idea how he carried his instrument in, and how he spent the entire morning jamming with him, spoken word and bass, just jamming.

As fall migration picks up, I’m looking forward both to more birds (my seen-in-the-park list is already up to 114 species) and more non-bird encounters.

(A quick note about this blog – technical difficulties involving the catastrophic failure and subsequent replacement of the hard drive on my brand new computer resulted in a month-long hiatus from posting.  But we’re officially back in business.)

A fond farewell to M&S

Posted on by
Reply
The way the storefront at 312 5th Avenue is supposed to look.

The way the storefront at 312 5th Avenue is supposed to look.

Long before I moved to Brooklyn for real, I was a regular visitor to Park Slope – and a regular customer at M&S Prime Meats. The main reason I made that DTW-LGA flight so many times was to see Eric, of course . . .  but having an honest-to-God Italo-Uruguayan pork store, one that made its own mozzarella, PRACTICALLY ACROSS THE STREET kind of sealed the deal.

M&S is where I bought ricotta to spoon over fresh strawberries. It’s where I gazed wistfully at aged-til-just-this-side-of-funky slabs of beef, splurging on extra-thick rib-eye steaks once a year. It’s where I ran when I was out of pancetta, or needed spicy broccoli rabe or roasted red peppers. It’s where I discovered the joy of lard bread.

This past Sunday, after 10 days in Michigan, I dropped by to stock up. The window that usually featured hand-lettered lists of specials and odd newspaper clippings (most recently, tabloid coverage of Luis Suarez’s infamous bite out of Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder) had been transformed – I was going to say “defaced” – with slick invitations to check out somebody called “Russo” on Yelp. That was jarring. But the note on the door was worse:

We are sorry to inform you that M&S Prime Meats will close it (sic) doors permanently in August.
Due to Mel’s health problems, he can no longer spend and dedicate the time necessary to the store like it requires.
Luckily our good friend Jack, from Russo’s fresh mozzarella and pasta will be taking over the store and we know he will do a great job caring for it.
We would like to thank every single one of you for your support throughout these years, We will miss you.

THANK YOU and A BIG HUG FOR YOU GUYS and GOOD LUCK.

Mel

In retrospect, there were signs. Common items were inexplicably in short supply. Mel seemed glum and detached. Sometimes I’d enter the store and just stand there, waiting for someone to emerge from the back.

But this . . . this was far too abrupt.

I went back the following day hoping to catch Mel. I found him out front, shooting the breeze with a group of UPS guys on lunch break. “I just want to give you a hug,” I blurted out, and did. We exchanged a few pleasantries, I told him how much I loved the store, he basically repeated what he’d written in the letter, we wished one another good luck and good health, and that was that.

It’s probably just as well that my words stayed dammed up; food memories are like dreams, not nearly as interesting to others as they are to you. Still, it’s remarkable how many milestones in my Brooklyn life have involved food from M&S, starting with the first brunch Eric and I hosted together (sausage, red pepper and broccoli rabe frittatas), to our wedding party at the Bell House (ricotta for the cheesecake, plus something like ten loaves of lard bread), to our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple (those aforementioned rib-eye steaks).

Thanks for the memories, Mel.

My week in lunch – the rest of the story

Posted on by
Reply

Wednesday: noodles in Bensonhurst

 

IMG_1555

Hand-pulled noodles from the Hand Pull Noodle & Dumpling House

My plan for Wednesday was to take the D or the N to 18th Avenue, then walk the roughly mile-long stretch of avenue – southwest or northeast, depending which train I took – to the other line’s 18th Avenue stop.

The N came first, and so I emerged at 18th Avenue and 63rd Street and headed southwest.  Chinese and Italian were the two cuisines duking it out for my $7.50 lunch budget.  I passed several Chinese places almost immediately, but wasn’t ready to commit.  At the corner of 70th Street, a giant ice cream cone tried to lure me to a Sicilian pastry shop before I’d even eaten lunch, but my puritan streak* just wouldn’t allow it.  At 71st, Gino’s Focacceria promised extreme-eater bragging rights with vastedda (Sicilian for “you don’t want to know”), but it was closed. At 72nd Street, I made my call: the Hand Pull Noodle & Dumpling House.  I placed my order and took a seat.

For entertainment as I waited, I watched the owner’s two kids: a stocky, buzz-cut boy of maybe 7 or 8, and a preschool girl with two braids yoked together in a ruffled pink scrunchy.  The girl wore rubber sandals that squeaked – not an incidental, new-shoe kind of squeak, but an emphatic, baby-toy squeak.  Their grandmother painstakingly peeled, cored and cubed an apple for them, which they ignored.  Instead, the girl gleefully employed a pencil to inflict multiple puncture wounds on a piece of corrugated cardboard, while the boy offered up a lecture on pirates (“Do you like pirates? I would put every pirate in the Triangle of Death; that’s a real thing, the Triangle of Death.”).

They were starting to make me a little nervous – I was glad my food arrived quickly.

The fare: squiggly, chewy noodles in 5 spice-scented broth, inconsequential bits of pork (just enough to prove the dish wasn’t vegetarian), minced scallions and cilantro, mustardy greens, and funky, salty preserved cabbage.  The tab: $5.  The verdict: delicious.

Hand Pull Noodle & Dumpling House, 7201 18th Ave, Brooklyn 11204

A gallery of scenes from the neighborhood follows.

Giant ice cream cone, meet spiral shrub.

Giant ice cream cone, meet spiral shrub.

IMG_1550

Sadly, Gino’s appears to have served its last spleen sandwich – online reports have it closed for good.

IMG_1557

One of many social clubs linked to cities in Sicily. I also passed the Societa Figli di Ragusa, the Militello Val Catania Society and the Sciacca Social Club.

IMG_1549

Better luck next time, Azzurri.

IMG_1548

Dollar stores along the avenue had especially colorful displays.

Thursday: Uighur in Brighton Beach  

Kashkar Cafe's namesake salad

Kashkar Cafe’s namesake salad

Needless to say, I didn’t set out in search of Uighur food.  The general plan for the day was to take the B/Q to Sheepshead Bay, see what there was to see (and eat) around there, then continue on to Brighton Beach (where Russian food would be a safe bet if I came up empty in Sheepshead Bay) and take the train back from there.

There were a few small problems with this plan. Sheepshead Bay – or at least the part of Sheepshead Bay I was in – is not especially walkable.**  The Belt Parkway cuts through it just south of the B/Q station, and it was hard for a clueless pedestrian to figure out which streets went over it, which went under it, which dead-ended at it, and which were on-ramps to it.  I was more focused on (a) not getting lost and (b) not getting killed by a car than on lunchtime serendipity.  When I did spot an interesting-looking café, it turned out to be a fortune-telling parlor.***

At last I got to Emmons Avenue, which runs along Sheepshead’s namesake bay, and found myself in a nautical world of gargantuan restaurants.****  It was inspiring to see Greek, Turkish and Azerbaijani places coexisting in peace and harmony, even if all of them fell outside my $7.50 “lunch challenge” budget. 

And so I trudged on, past auto dealerships and car washes and streets that all seemed to be named Brighton with a number appended and, if a number alone wasn’t enough to distinguish them from the other Brightons, some additional appellation (e.g., Brighton 10 Lane, Brighton 10 Court, Brighton 10 Terrace, etc.). 

When I finally made it to Brighton Beach Avenue, I was ravenous.  And there, beckoning me, was the Kashkar Café.  Confession time: I had heard of Kashkar Café before, most likely on Chowhound.  But since I couldn’t remember what I had heard, or even what kind of a place it was (Russian? Georgian? Uzbek?), and since I hadn’t set out with it as my destination, I rationalized that it was not exactly a violation of my self-imposed “lunch challenge” rules.  Even if it was, screw the rules: I was hungry and here was a restaurant that fit (barely) within my budget.  I was going in.

Kashkar Café, as it turns out, is Uighur.  The menu offers a mini-tutorial on Uighur culture and history, and the dining room (by far the prettiest place I’ve visited this week) is full of Uighur art and artifacts. Almost everything on the menu, save for kebabs (of course), was new to me, and for the first time all week, I felt seriously constrained by my $7.50 limit.  But rules are rules (even if I’d already bent one by coming here in the first place), and so I limited myself to a single item, the Salad Kashkar ($7).  I couldn’t even get a lousy order of bread ($2) to go with it.  Needless to say, I drank water.

Fortunately, the salad was hearty: thin slices of red pepper and cucumber, shredded carrots and something white (turnip? radish?), loads of fresh dill, coriander seeds, and scraps of meat the kitchen couldn’t figure out what else to do with (I say that with admiration, not to disparage) – all soaked in a vinegary dressing.  It was satisfying, but to be completely honest,  I would still have liked some bread.

Kashkar Café, 1141 Brighton Beach Ave, Brooklyn 11235

Mark down today as the most challenging lunch challenge yet.  And now . . . picture time!

 

Big boat . . .

Big boats . . .

. . . breed big restaurants.

. . . breed big restaurants.

Fishermen plying the waters of Sheepshead Bay

IMG_1572

Brighton Beach fruit

Post-Soviet nostalgia, anyone?

Post-Soviet nostalgia, anyone?

Friday: Bangladeshi in Kensington

IMG_1595

It was with a certain amount of weariness that I set out today.  The past week has given me new respect for the authors of “obsessive quest” blogs – people like Julie Powell (of Julie/Julia fame) and my friend Gary Jarvis (who set out to run every street in Brooklyn and got more than halfway there).

Keeping this shit up is hard.

I toyed with the idea of heading to North Brooklyn, but that seemed like too much work. (I’ve also heard tell there are lots of annoying hipsters up there.)  Instead, I took the G train to the other end of the line – Church Avenue.

South Asian and Eastern European cultures collide at the intersection of Church and McDonald.  There’s the Golden Farm International Foods, promising Russian-Ukrainian-Polish-Turkish-Israeli-Kosher-Organic-Gourmet groceries; here’s a halal meat market and a grocery store selling live fish; across the street, an outlet for Bangladeshi fashions. A few Latino businesses, including a halal carniceria, have also found their way into the mix.

I had my choice of several Bangladeshi restaurants, all of them completely empty. I knew it was Ramadan, but wasn’t sure how observant the neighborhood’s South Asian community would be. The answer, it turns out, is “very.”  But places were still open for business, and so I chose one at random and awkwardly entered.

A lone worker, sitting at a table and tapping away at his smartphone, acted a bit surprised to have a customer.  I ordered an item from the steam table selection – long slices of eggplant and potato cooked with mild chilis – and he dished it up for me.  With rice, it came to $5. When I asked about the rows of Styrofoam drink cups in the cooler, he told me it was a cooling drink, very popular, and insisted that I have one, gratis.

He was much, much sweeter than I would be if I were fasting and had to serve food to people who weren’t.  I left a big tip.

The food was just OK.  It wasn’t very photogenic, the restaurant was dimly lit, and I was already feeling like a jerk, so no lunchtime snapshots today.  But about that drink . . . it was intensely pink and intensely sweet, with black specks floating in it – seeds, on closer inspection – and a mild, floral taste. I looked it up later, and learned that it’s called Rooh Afza.  It is, just as I’d been told, very popular.  It’s often part of a South Asian iftar meal (which is probably why all those cups had been prepared and were stashed in the cooler for later tonight).  The optional seeds – sabja, or sweet basil – are supposed to make the drink especially cooling. (That seems like a tall order for a tiny seed, but whatever.)

Ghoroa Restaurant, 478 McDonald Ave, Brooklyn 11218

 

 

*Yes, I do have one.

**Though knowing a bit about the community, rather than wandering blindly, would surely help.

***Or not.  A subsequent check online reveals that Café Rokhat – “do not confuse the café with the psychic next door” – is actually a Tajik restaurant with a sizable fan base on Yelp.  

****What is it about water that makes restaurants swell to ginormous proportions?

Westbury Court

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_1536 A bit more on yesterday’s lunchtime ramble:

The streets to the west of Flatbush are block-long “courts” dead-ending at the B/Q tracks and lined with apartments and row houses built, with many flourishes, at the turn of the last century.*  I walked down one of them, Westbury Court, to check it out and take pictures.  Back home, looking for more information on the history of the street and its rather grand apartment buildings, I mostly came up empty – but I did learn that the writer Edwidge Danticat lived there for a few years as a teenager and that she used the street’s name as the title of an essay about loss and memory.

I read the essay yesterday afternoon, for the first time.  It tells of a fire, dead children, a shooting, run-of-the-mill burglaries.  While taking pictures and thinking about lunch, I had stumbled into a dense thicket of memory, lives, ghosts.

I wish I’d been less clueless and more reverential, that I’d treated the block as hallowed ground. But, you know, it’s all hallowed ground.  Westbury Court just happens to have an extraordinary storyteller to remind us of that fact.

End of Westbury Court

End of Westbury Court

Nautical tile, north side of Westbury Court

Nautical tile, north side of Westbury Court

Entry detail, south side of Westbury Court

Entry detail, south side of Westbury Court

*My go-to source in this case being Adrienne Onofri’s Walking Brooklyn.

Tuesday’s lunch challenge report

Posted on by
Reply

 IMG_1541

With torrential rain, thunder and lightning, damaging winds, hail, frogs and locusts in the forecast, my so-called challenge became more, well, challenging.  But I was up for it.  Umbrella in hand and just-in-case MetroCard in my bag, I cut through Prospect Park to the Lincoln Road entrance.  Even if my go-to place for Trini food* was off limits (the challenge is to find places I’ve neither eaten in nor read about), I figured there would be plenty of other options in Prospect Lefferts.

From Lincoln Road, I walked south on Flatbush not quite to Parkside, then back up the other side of the street.  The commercial strip is heavy on laundries/laundromats, hair and nail salons (my favorite: “Butter Nails”), wire transfer services and small groceries.  I saw one fancy coffee shop – pretty much obligatory in a Brooklyn neighborhood that the New York Times  real estate section has called the borough’s “best-kept secret.”  (Amazing, the ability of black and brown people to keep the places they live secret!  Cue Spike Lee and “Christopher Columbus syndrome.”)   In addition to straight-up West Indian eateries, I passed West African (one) and Chinese and Indian (many) places . . . which, come to think of it, is in and of itself a pretty West Indian mix.  Oh, and there was also a clothing store (pictured above) that was essentially a shrine to Bob Marley.

I finally turned in to Errol’s Caribbean Bakery – Caribbean, in this case, meaning Jamaican.  They had hot food on offer – jerk, various curries – but the heat and humidity had done a number on my appetite and what I really wanted was a snack and a cold drink.

The fare and the tab: callaloo patty ($2) and store-made** peanut punch ($4).  Both of these, I should add, were at the top of the price range in their respective categories . . . I could probably have had change back from a $5 bill if I’d gone with a beef patty and ginger beer, but you pay more for health food.  And that’s what this callaloo patty was: plenty of long-cooked chopped greens stuffed inside a whole-wheat crust, then baked.  I am not generally a big whole wheat fan – there’s a certain hair-shirt aspect to it that I find (a) annoying and (b) not so tasty – but there was nothing self-righteous or penitential about this patty.

The peanut punch was cold, creamy, and sweet.  Jamaicans may sing its praises as a healthful, protein-packed energy drink, but I know a milkshake when I taste one.

The ambiance: bakery display cases full of buns, cakes and rolls, a refrigerator full of drinks and juices and a counter area full of friendly people.

IMG_1543

Behind the counter at Errol’s

Errol’s Caribbean Bakery, 661 Flatbush Ave, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn

Errol's Bakery & Catering on Urbanspoon

*De Hot Pot, 1127 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn.  Best doubles I’ve ever had.

**I refuse to say “house made,” because Errol’s is definitely not a “house.”

 

This week’s challenge: lunch

Posted on by
Reply
Not your ordinary agua fresca

Not your ordinary agua fresca

Here’s the challenge I’ve set for myself this week: head out to a different neighborhood each day and find someplace new for lunch for $7.50 or less.  No old favorites (sorry, De Hot Pot, Ba Xuyen and Yun Nan Flavour Garden), no falling back on Chowhound or Cheap Eats recommendations, no vetting places online.  The point is to explore.

And so I took the R to 45th Street and strolled up to 5th Ave (past a Dominican spot, duly noted), where every third or fourth storefront is a Mexican restaurant, bakery or grocery store with a lunch counter tucked away.  El Comal drew me in with its name (which has sentimental associations from a favorite Central American restaurant in Detroit, now sadly closed) but mainly with the bags of chicharrones and multi-hued jars of agua fresca out front.  The menu covered all your standard antojitos (tacos, sopes, tortas and cemitas, etc.).  It’s also a bakery, so you can check out the shell-shaped, sugar-dusted sweet breads and cream-filled horns while you wait.  If you find such things tempting, be forewarned.  (Bakeries are usually dangerous places for me, but I’ve never developed a taste for Mexican pastries, so I was safe here.)

The woman behind the lunch counter won my heart by giving my bad Spanish (“dos tacos de lengua”) the benefit of her doubt.  Si, con cebolla y cilantro.  Para llevar, gracias.

The fare: soft corn tortillas, piled high with cubes of tongue steamed until the meat was practically melted down, and sprinkled with onion and cilantro.  And because I’m indecisive, one container of red sauce and one of green.

The tab: $2.50 per taco.  (Tongue is a premium ingredient: who knew?  More pedestrian options were $2.00 per taco.)

The ambiance: a row of small tables against the wall in back, religious statues on top of the bakery case, no dine-in customers to be seen.  (I had already planned to eat in the park.)

Because lunch was so cheap, I grabbed a melon agua fresca (another $2.50) from the counter out front on my way out.  But wait! What is she doing? Is that melon granita she’s scooping into a plastic glass?  And then ladling the juice over it?  Indeed it was.  It was like a combination agua fresca/granizado and it was icy cold, pulpy and delicious.

El Comal, 4711 5th Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Tacos in the park

Tacos in the park

El Comal Jugeria & Taqueria on Urbanspoon

Class at SummerStage

Posted on by
Reply

Dear SummerStage security people:

Was it really necessary to evict concertgoers from the empty “Friends of SummerStage” tent during last night’s downpour? Even when the well-dressed white couple who’d briefly occupied two of the many seats had already left? (They were just not feeling Bodega Bamz.*) Even when the trespassers included toddlers and babies?

I was admiring the way others had seized the tent and wishing I’d thought to do the same – it seemed totally in keeping with the words Ana Tijoux was firing off so powerfully and joyfully from the stage – when you showed up. From what I could see, you were polite (thank you for that) but firm. Within a few minutes the hoi polloi who’d taken shelter had scattered (well, there was that problem with the toddler who ran away and hid, but the parents eventually coaxed him/her out) and the tent was empty again.

I appreciate the need to offer some sort of incentive to major donors, I really do, but come on. The tent was empty. EMPTY. And it was pouring. And did I mention the babies and toddlers?

Great concert, though.

*Neither was I, but that’s neither here nor there.