Category Archives: Seen on the run

Brooklyn bodega names

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Food and desire in Carroll Gardens

There are certain naming conventions for bodegas. Initials are popular (“L&L Grocery Deli”); so are street numbers (“513 Deli & Grill”). Many bodega names pay tribute to the owners’ city or region of origin (witness the Punjab and Himalayan groceries in Kensington, or the Pueblas, Cholulas and Chinantlas scattered across the borough). In gentrified neighborhoods, bodegas often incorporate “gourmet,” “organic,” or “fresh” into their signage – even as their shelves overflow with Doritos and Red Bull.

This post pays tribute to bodegas that break with convention, adopting names that are especially evocative, sweet, retro or just plain odd.

A sampling follows. Continue reading →

Street art Sunday: corvids

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Crows, in Red Hook

For you non-birders, “corvids” refers to members of the family Corvidae, which includes jays, magpies, crows and ravens. They’re smart and playful, often raucous, and you can find them in the most urban of environments. Blue jays gather in scrawny street trees; crows patrol city streets; and ravens, the wildest of them all, are presumed to nest on the roofs of old warehouses and factories along the South Brooklyn waterfront. (As far as I know, no one has actually discovered our ravens’ nest location, which is probably for the best. Let the mystery be.)

Continue reading →

Street art Sunday: women

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IMG_6888In honor of women’s history month (a thing only in the United States, where we like to declare months to compensate for our neglect the rest of the year) and International Women’s Day, coming up on Friday, this week’s street art post focuses on images of strong, beautiful women and girls around Brooklyn. The spectacular mural at the top of this post can be found at Nostrand and Greene Av in Bed Stuy. It celebrates women who’ve changed the world for the better, including Shirley Chisholm (on horseback, armored for battle), Audre Lorde, Dolores Huerta, Clara Lemlich, Dorothy Day, and many others.

If you don’t know who any of these women are, you should. Continue reading →

Street art Sunday: Mexico in Brooklyn

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IMG_6858Today’s bonus post launches a new blog feature, highlighting especially cool and/or weird street art seen around Brooklyn. It’s quick and easy enough to post weekly, even when I’m at my laziest, which is often. It gives my backlog of “seen on the run” photos a raison d’etre. And, hopefully, it will brighten your own Sunday.

In honor of our Mexico trip, this week’s installment features “Templo Mixcoac,” seen yesterday morning at the corner of Norman and Guernsey in Greenpoint and credited (I think – deciphering tags is not my forte) to @tiburon_704, who appears to be on Instagram (also not my forte). Continue reading →

Gowanus speaks

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5E992C7E-78BF-4DEB-BB32-F6ED93413FA7The street artist who pastes cryptic sayings on walls around the city is back at it. And how better to dip my toe back into the world of blogging than to post these two additions to this blog’s coverage of his/her work? (You can see previous examples here and here.)

The photo at the top of this post is from the “build it green” re-use center on 9th St between Second Av and the Gowanus Canal. The one below is from the exterior of the defunct Morbid Anatomy Museum at Third Av and 7th St.

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And yes – the fact that I’m once again posting snapshots of things seen on the run around Brooklyn means I’m, well, back to running around Brooklyn. It’s been a long and tedious recovery from my elbow fracture, but I now have more-or-less full use of both arms, which means: more running! more birding! more two-fisted eating!

And more blogging, too.

(In the meantime – if you see more examples of these posters, please: pass ’em along.)

Rainy day wisdom

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Seen (in front of my own nose) along Flatbush Avenue

Rainy days like today call for a warm blanket, a hot drink and – street art. This is a continuation of a series of posts capturing wall posters with cryptic – sometimes unsettling – sayings slapped up around Brooklyn. One reader commented that they look like “humongous fortune cookie fortunes, but with disturbing messages from a dystopic society,” which is an apt description.

Here are some new (or newish) examples that I’ve come across on runs over the last few months. Continue reading →

What I saw (and ate) at the 2017 NYC marathon

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Almost halfway there . . . runners closing in on the 20K mark in Greenpoint

For three years now, I’ve compiled a spectator’s guide to the NYC marathon. Sometimes, I even take my own advice. Here’s a belated race report, of sorts, from someone who did not run – but nonetheless spent the entire day (from a little after 7 in the morning until nearly 7 at night) along, or in proximity to, the course.

Pre-race

I love marathon morning. I love it even more now that the first Sunday in November is also the first day of standard time, which lets me bounce out of bed, linger over my coffee while the sky lightens, and still head out at a ridiculously early hour. By 7 am, I had my running shoes on and was heading down to Fourth Avenue for my traditional run-the-course-backwards jog from Park Slope to Bay Ridge. Continue reading →

I find my Cuban spot

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My Cuban Spot

Louie Estrada’s Cuban spot is now mine, too

What does it take to rouse this blog from its slumbers? What it takes, evidently,  is a jolt of sugar and caffeine, followed by a sharp slash of yellow mustard. Sour orange juice, garlic, salt and pork help, too.

Which is to say . . . I had lunch at this counter in Gowanus, and just had to write about it. My initial plan was to include it in my annual NYC marathon course round-up (yes, installment #3 will be arriving soon), but (a) My Cuban Spot is closed on Sundays and (b) it really deserves its own post. (UPDATE: the restaurant is now *open* on Sundays starting at noon. It’s closed Mondays.) Continue reading →

If walls could talk

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Last year, I posted about a series of cryptic messages printed on posters and pasted up on walls around the borough. I’m here to report that the artist(s) is (or are) still at it.

Here’s an updated gallery with some recently-spotted* additions. To me, the messages seem to have taken a darker turn. Is that an artifact of a small, skewed sample, do you suppose, or a reflection of darker times? Continue reading →