Lark's Brooklyn Blog - January 25, 2009

I love Brooklyn in the summer, when it sizzles.
I love Brooklyn in the winter, when it drizzles.

To (mis)quote a well-known homage to a (different) well-known city, I do love Brooklyn. Oh, you can ♥ NY all you like. In fact I saw a sign in a Greenwich Village shop the other day that said, "Go home and ♥ your own damn city". That's New York for you, cranky as hell.

But that's Old New York, the New York that took pride in being irascible and in a hurry. The city that never sleeps, and all that. But Brooklyn - Brooklyn is where families live. Where children go to school and moms buy groceries, and everyone stops by Mike's, an indie donut shop, to sit in a booth or on a stool at the counter and have a great cup of coffee for just one buck.

Bay Ridge is the neighborhood where my grandfather grew up. He attended Boys' High School, a companion institution to Girls' High School, which my grandmother attended. Both families had lived in the area for generations, both families valued education. I'm here walking the sidewalks, buying the daily Times, grabbing some falafel from my favorite restaurant, Bay Ridge Shish Kebab, and looking for the ghost of my grandfather. I'm riding the subway, going to a Cuban movie at 11am and talking to people on the street. I'm in my own crowded, grungy paradise.

Like a salmon inexorably lured to its natal stream, I was sucked into the vortex of Rockefeller Center at Christmas. The crowds on the street were "thick as hasty pudding" - like an island-sized mosh pit. People just cram in together and roll on down the blocks. There was lots of window shopping, but actual spending was way down. Still, spirits were high. What I like best about Rockefeller Center is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's gift store directly adjacent. Do you desire your own little desk-sized Michelangelo?

As an acclimatized Canadian, it gives me great pleasure to observe: New Yorkers can't skate. It is charming when they try. This is the new hot (cold) spot in Manhattan: Bryant Park, right behind the NY Public Library. Formerly the bedroom of bums, it has been transformed, with a chi-chi restaurant (named the Canadian. Huh?) Also restored to their former glory are the outdoor public washrooms that were built a century ago. Only three stalls per gender (and only two genders) but entirely made of granite and marble. After a long line-up with an employee (referee) making sure no one jumps the queue, one enters a little foyer with an ENORMOUS stylish bouquet of real, high-end flowers: orchids, protea, strange squiggly things, in a huge Grecian urn. Within the "business" area is another employee, making sure the marble sinks stay nice, and the towels are not tossed about.

And then - they created an alt. skating rink! Here are the kids from Harlem on an exotic outing, here are the Japanese university students, here are teenage girls in hijabs, and no one, not one, can skate. It is endearing to see people who pride themselves on - what? - living in NY? - taking baby steps, falling and whooping as they grab onto their friend's jacket on the way down, and like jingle bells of olde, "laughing all the way." Everyone is reduced to the least common denominator - it's good! Except for one boy - a Prince look-alike, who skated backwards and swerved past the lumbering families and swooshed up to pretty young girls, smiling. He had two stuffed bunnies tied to his skates, a brown one and a pink one, which he managed to make sexy.

Ah, New York, New York, it's a helluva town.