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Day 998 – New York State of Mind

Coke is everywhere. I’ve now wandered into three different men’s rooms in three separate bar/restaurants (these are all single-occupant aka “user friendly” washrooms) to find the tell-tale coke residue on the flat-topped (also user friendly) toilet paper dispenser.

Note to city council: legalize powder cocaine and tax it. Use money to increase subway capacity and trash pickup.

In case you were wondering what a “Fire Fox” is here’s your answer. The red panda. Yes, while three teenagers were getting mauled (and one killed) at the San Diego Zoo Annette and i were strolling the grounds of the Bronx Zoo (and watching the tigers having their daily enrichment).

A real “fire fox”

So, what else is there to report? Tons and tons of stuff and nothing at all. The money continues to pour into Brooklyn. There are new buildings going up. Old buildings are getting magnificent renovations. Red Hook, called “blood hook” when i was born in 1964 and the setting of the grim tale “Last Exit to Brooklyn” is gentrifying as fast as a region with no subway service can gentrify. What’s nice is the general population seems a bit older (i.e. my age). When Annette and i lived on Bergen street (between the fully established Court Street and the rapidly up-and-coming Smith Street) we had to suffer through wave after wave of pretty 20-somethings who all acted like they had discovered the new world. The dot com crash threw a big bucket of water on their “everything is new, it’s a new world, wheeee!” lives and almost immediately thereafter Annette and i got married and moved to Minnesota so she could pursue the PhD. So, coming back now is actually very pleasant. What was new is now either out of business or fairly well established.

Without a doubt one of the best highlites was the trip to the Red Hook Fairway market. Fairway is odd duck. I’m not sure who owns it, but there used to be just one on the upper west side. Then a second one opened right on the Hudson at 125th street. Then another… and finally one opened in a magnificent old waterfront warehouse in Red Hook Brooklyn. What makes Fairway different? Hard to put into words. I mean, they sell groceries. But i guess the first thing is the produce. It’s all locally grown wherever possible, and all magnificent. Not the “photo-ready” stuff that Dean & Deluca sells on Prince & Broadway in SoHo, but really good stuff you’d want to take home and eat.

The crowds are thick and the turnover is super fast, so nothing fresh sits around very long. The prices are excellent by New York standards and very good by “rest of the world” standards. I guess the thing is it’s a very “come as you are” kind of place. You can get the insanely expensive “organic, free-range, air-chilled, humanely killed” chickens (popular with very pale women) or the regular fresh poultry… or even the pre-packaged Purdue birds. The Fairway on 125th street had a walk-in meat locker (with down vests hanging on hooks you could put on to avoid a chill whilst browsing the hanging meat), but the Brooklyn Fairway has the more standard counters for meats and such. Basically anything you might want in the way of food can be found in a Fairway market so it’s really up to you to either know what you want or to be adventurous. Oh, and the bread alone is worth the trip.

So last night Annette and i met up at her office and took the F train back to our “old” neighborhood in Brooklyn. We got tickets to see “Juno” at our dingy old local movie place on Court Street and wandered around a little before the show. In case you’re wondering “regular” movie tickets are now $9.50 each.

All of the old time businesses are still there, most of the kiddie businesses have changed hands at least once. The bars that popped up on Smith Street are still there for the most part.

“Juno” turned out to be all the reviews said it was, and i still don’t believe it will ever play in Idaho. Allison Janney was awesome in a fairly small role (in terms of screen time).

Afterward we emerged to find it pouring rain. We hurried back down to Smith Street and ducked in an “Irish” bar that had opened after we left for Minnesota. Thankfully it was nearly empty. The energetic bartender came over and chatted while pouring my guinness and chatted while pouring Annette’s G & T and chatted while i walked off to the men’s room, (hey, look, coke on the TP dispenser). A couple rounds later we were back on the subway headed for the Bronx and an hour after that we were home. Nice not to think about driving, nice to get a seat on the packed subway, nice to walk in the rain with my wife.

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