By which I mean, between home and Green-Wood. Because of the heat and my general laziness, I’ve been going on short, doodling runs around the neighborhood this past week. Heading south, toward Green-Wood, gives me lots of options of streets to run up and down, so that’s what I’ve been doing. And as I’ve done it, I’ve of course been looking for cool street art – like the mural at the top of this post, on 23rd St. close to Fifth Av.
They’re younger than the TikTok teens who trolled the Trump campaign so brilliantly, but they’re just as magnificent: the Brooklyn kids who’ve been turning out for marches and rallies in support of Black lives. The fence around P.S. 39 at Sixth Avenue and 8th Street has become an impromptu gallery for protest art, as you can see above.
A sampling follows. Continue reading
50 Favorite Places #18
Okay, so it’s not a “place,” exactly. It’s many places, scattered across the borough. Perhaps it’s better described as a style, a statement, even a culture. But the creative things that Brooklynites do with their tiny front yards deserve a shout out. For instance, I’m not sure why the folks in the Park Slope building depicted at the top of this post turned their yard into an amusement park, but I’m glad they did. If I had the ability to embed video, you’d see those sparkly rainbow pinwheels spinning wildly and it would be guaranteed to make you smile.
In fact, many tiny Brooklyn yards seem calculated to make you smile, like the one below, in the Gowanus section. (“They must be Italian!” was the reaction of an Italian-Canadian friend.)
50 Favorite Places #14
April Fool! No, the condos that have sprouted like so many 12-story mushrooms along Fourth Avenue in Park Slope aren’t actually among my favorite places. In fact, I think they’re hideous. But one’s dislikes can reveal as much as one’s likes, or possibly even more, and so I’m devoting this post to them – and in particular, to thinking through just why I find them so awful. Continue reading
Cold, snow, whatever: there’s almost always a bike outside Martin’s
50 Favorite Places #2
This is no longer Martin’s café – he handed it over to his one-time employee, Jenn, a few years ago – but it’s still mine. It’s the best place I know to sit and watch snowflakes drift down on a blizzardy afternoon like this one. Or to grab an iced coffee on a sweltering August day. Or to read, when the apartment is too small and the distractions too many.
What I like about Martin’s, aside from the excellent coffee, is that it’s an honest-to-god café . . . by which I mean, it’s a place to drink coffee, talk and read. It’s not a co-working space at which coffee happens to be served. There is no wi-fi, the tables will not hold both your coffee and your laptop (not even your tablet), and if there are outlets, they’re few and well-hidden (I’ve never bothered to look).
Jenn has made a few changes. Continue reading
I’ve posted several times about the unknown artist(s) whose sardonic observations are pasted on walls around the borough – most recently here. Over the past year, I’ve watched their sayings fade, rip and generally deteriorate, with no new contributions..
Until this week, when the piece at the top of this post appeared on Union St in Park Slope. I’m including it here for the record . . . and in hopes that Brooklyn-based readers may respond with their own sightings.
(“Back at it” also refers to me and this blog. I’m planning a new focus for 2020, so stay tuned.)
. . .
Addenda:
While photographing the Smith-9th station in mid-January, I found this:
And, while running through Gowanus (6th St between Second and Third avenues) in early February, this:
My sentiments exactly
Here it is, delayed by my traditional post-marathon trip (look for a report on Brooklyn in Texas, coming soon) and general laziness: the view from the sidelines of this year’s NYC marathon. Seeing as how I presume to publish a spectator’s guide every year, it only seems right to share how my own spectating went down.
I began the day, as is my custom, with a run along the Fourth Avenue segment of the course, from roughly Mile 7 in Park Slope to Mile 2.something in Bay Ridge. Thanks to the end of daylight savings time (daylight savings time is a fraud and a scourge, as far as I’m concerned, and I look forward to its end almost as much as I look forward to the marathon), I was able to set out in full light a little after 7 am. As I ran, I kept a rough count of the people I saw along the course. In descending order of frequency, they included:
The last comes with a story. Continue reading
It’s easy to make fun of Park Slope and its earnest, politically-correct, kombucha-guzzling denizens. There are the bars that offer special happy hours for new mothers (“have a pint with your half pint”); the stroller traffic jams; the antics of the Park Slope Food Coop, dutifully reported in the Linewaiters’ Gazette; and kale, kale, kale, everywhere you turn, in places kale has no business being.
It’s easy to mock, and mock it I do (just ask Eric) – but I also love this neighborhood. Continue reading
Yesterday, Yemeni bodega owners across New York City went on a half-day strike against the Fake President’s Muslim ban, shuttering their stores at noon. (If you’re not from here, a word of explanation: bodegas are small neighborhood stores that sell groceries, sundries and quick eats, like the bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches that fuel city mornings.) You can read about the action – which drew thousands to a demonstration and prayer service outside Brooklyn Borough Hall – here.
This morning, the window of the bodega at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street in Park Slope was plastered with messages of support from school kids, other Fifth Avenue businesses and neighborhood residents.
I went in and bought a 4-pack of toilet paper, just because.
Really rich people make really bad neighbors.
The process of gentrification is pretty far along in Park Slope, but the above-pictured sign on 1st street between 4th and 5th avenues still stopped me in my tracks. The block is divided between commercial spaces and condos at the 4th avenue end, and nice (but modest) brownstones closer to 5th avenue. It’s not, in other words, the kind of block you’d normally associate with house-hunting oligarchs.
And therein lies a tale. Continue reading
Not another Brooklyn blog 