Endless Knots

"I need something to eat" -- Roland's reflection on the same

Walking the streets of New York is a game of dodgeball. If it isn't a busker in the subway or a homeless vet on the corner or an activist with a clipboard, it's a person, like the one who approached me at the corner of Park Place and Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights last Thursday. I'd just come from a delicious meal with Daughter #2 at Cheryl's Global Soul, an extra-good and reasonably priced family fave; we'd had a lovely time and I was plenty full.

She was probably my age, maybe even 10 years younger, with a makeshift cast on her foot, a cane, a tattered coat, and large gaps between her teeth. I can't remember if she apologized first but however she approached me, it wasn't threatening. Just sad. She said the obvious: "I need something to eat." And because the received wisdom on the streets is that you "shouldn't" just give people money because, of course, they're all junkies and drunks, she was a step ahead. "You can buy it for me." Embarrassed at the wealth of riches in my wallet -- credit cards, Metro cards, and the almighty cash -- I reached right in. My impulse was to give it all to her but I didn't though I gave her the most I've ever handed out in a situation like this: a twenty. 

It happened right here (Google Street View)

She was so diminished that I'm not certain she took in that she could buy a couple of meals with that (in my mother's newly hip hometown, probably 1.5) but thanked me and shuffled off. I wanted to go with her, buy her several meals, find her an apartment and a job, and reform the entire economic system that results in her being where she is and me being where I am. Not to mention the Iraq War vet sitting on 23rd St in Manhattan the next morning with a big sign saying who he was and holding up his Army ID in case anyone would think someone would impersonate such a person. I'm sure it's possible but if ever anyone looked the part...

I didn't drop a dime for him or the half-dozen others I saw; maybe three dozen because at a certain point you have to screen it out or the pathos becomes overwhelming, paralytic. Big cities magnify the divisions and few places render them in greater 3D than New York.

All of which is prelude to Roland Merullo's reporting ("The table of the hungry") on the hornet's nest of greed and stupidity that is going on in Washington at the moment, making many more streets full of people like my friend from last Thursday. And reservations. Here (Boston Globe opinion page) he confronts a similar situation at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Roland says it all so well and with such precision. His lede:

I’ve been thinking lately about an expression I once heard from a Russian friend: “The full to the table of the hungry do not go.” I suppose it’s on my mind because of the news from Washington: the well-fed insisting on political grandstanding they surely know will cause great hardship to the poorest among us. It’s quite a sight, isn’t it, men and women earning six-figure salaries and pontificating about the need for cuts to programs that overwhelmingly give succor to the worst-off — the poor, the ill, the handicapped, the helpless. Then you see these same folks making a public spectacle of kneeling in prayer and asking God to help our nation. Where I come from we have a word for that. It is “hypocrisy.”

Carrot dust and heaven in a barn... and a flood... and a festival

It was a gorgeous late August day,
fields abundant with the fruits of summer.

 

Even the goat and pig were friendly.

 

But we had come to eat the best meal of our lives.
First, hors d's (photo by Etienne Frossard) on the patio

 

With the eve's wine in the fine hands of Daniel Johnnes (r)

Fifty people at one very long table in the center of the barn
(photo, Etienne)

with tomatoes for sale along the walls.

With Ray Bradley (left) and his pal (since they were 14 growing up near Storrs, CT) David Bouley cooking in the kitchen, grilling cod in the field.

Six courses, maybe 16 (photo from Bouley Restaurant on Facebook, thanks)

Which then were served to discerning palates (thanks again, Etienne)

Including the piece, the Carrot Dust of the title (Etienne, encore)

 

Course by course until it was over and David and Ray said goodbye
and that they'd do it again -- soon

And that the Annual Festival would take place Sept 25

 

But what we did not know is that just a few days later,
Hurricane Irene would turn Ray's farm into this
and ruin his whole crop

 

As the waters receded, fund-raising arose (everyone loves Ray)
and he continued to go to (Grand Army Plaza and 97th Street Farmers) Market
selling what he could (here on Sept 24)

 

And the next day, we went to the festival, which NY Times reported on here
and where Etienne took this picture of these tractor drivers

And I took this picture of Etienne

And of Heather Marold Thomason, whose company badfeather does Ray's website and who's been reporting on the flood on her blog

And said goodbye to Iris Kimberg, who runs the show

And to the stone pig

Wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

Meet The Lion, a stationary animal on the Prospect Park Carousel in Brooklyn, which quickly became the desired mode of transportation for two small friends of mine.

It was a day of double vision for sure as the event was the Annual Meeting of the Brooklyn Brownstone Parents of Twins Club...meaning all these sets of twins were there too (two). I refrained from snapping everyone/two so you'll just have to roar at the lion and watch the roundy-round below.

 

And now for the dizzying part:

 

A little bit of Brooklyn in old West Newton

Time to haul out the "Brooklyn Blogger" T-shirt (white with blue lettering). Or maybe the simple (long, soft cotton, kinda elegant) brown T-shirt with "Brooklyn" in neon green lettering. Today's Dining section of the NY Times leads with "Brooklyn: The Brand."

To some (see "Hip deep in Brooklyn," Alex Beam's screed against the city that is its own county), it's an object of ridicule. But if you were brought up by a mother born in Brooklyn with children and, recently, little-children, who call it home, then, well...Brooklyn is sacred ground.

Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn
Photo from Ephemeral New York

I was bred to believe that Brooklyn was the best place on earth - or at least was when my mother was growing up. When asked where she was born, she smiled: "Clinton Avenue near Pratt Institute," as if the association with both places coated her upbringing with panache. When she was a child, Clinton Avenue was the wide street with elegant mansions on both sides. My grandparents owned the candy shop at the corner of Clinton and Myrtle, now the home of Connecticut Muffin. She loved it, never more so than the day when she was five and she found a gold bangle with diamond chips on Clinton Avenue. (The owner never located, I have it today, 95 years later.)

When the Dodgers left Brooklyn, there was great sadness in our house. They were never forgiven.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was referred to so many times by my English-teacher mother that I thought there were no trees there except that one.

Of course, we never visited Brooklyn because by the time I was old enough to remember anything about it, it had become a "bad neighborhood," a scourge to throw over an entire borough. Myrtle Avenue had become "Murder Avenue."

All that began to change in the past decade. My mother's neighborhood is now Clinton Hill, bordering nearby Fort Greene. The second largest farmers market in New York takes place each Saturday at Grand Army Plaza in the center of a circle that includes Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Flatbush, Lefferts Garden, Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and a lot of other nabes that are increasingly desirable (some have been for a while: quiet down, Park Slopers). And I see that I have posted at least 20 times about Brooklyn.

So no surprise that the NY Times is catching up today with a bit of an enjoyable snark about how everyone (of the food purveying sort) wants to be from Brooklyn.

Me, I'm from Brooklyn twice removed, I guess, once by my mother, the other by my kids.

Grand Army peppers and beets

Frequent readers know of my fascination with farmers markets and food (as in previous post) thus these two snapshots taken last weekend at the Grand Army Plaza market. It was so crowded that it was near impossible to capture the piles of fall bounty.

 

 

 

 

A Newtonian (actually two) in New York (Times, with apologies to Sting)

Pickles and ice cream. Two famous foodies from our hometown get shouted out in NY Times food section today: Jon Orren of Wheelhouse Pickles and Jennifer Dundas of Blue Marble Ice Cream, both for their association with our fave part of NY--Brooklyn.

Jon, previously profiled here, gets the mention for his interview in The New Brooklyn Cookbook.

Jennie (mentioned by store not personal name this time and previously profiled here and here) gets the spotlight for the event this coming Sunday at Blue Marble on Atlantic Ave. The store (a chain now, so wildly successful that distribution demands one less retail outlet) is closing this location with a party benefiting Sweet Dreams, the owners' ice cream shop in Rwanda. From the Times:

Blue Marble Ice Cream is closing its store at 420 Atlantic Avenue (Bond Street), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and on Sunday from 7 to 11 p.m. there will be a party there, with food, sparkling wine and ice cream, to benefit Sweet Dreams, an ice cream shop in Rwanda, which the owners of Blue Marble have opened; $25 a person or $50 a family at the door.

 

A tornado blows through Brooklyn

It was just a bit cool this afternoon in Brooklyn, the kind of cool where you wonder whether to wear a jacket but, then again, you think it's really not that chilly, yet without the jacket, you wish you'd worn one.

Then suddenly, around 5 PM, we noticed that it was extremely hot, so warm that we had to open the windows, remove socks, that sort of thing, the air very close. Odd, we said.

And just as quickly there was mammoth thunder, the sky turned dark, pelting rain, hail, and a wind so forceful that I saw someone across the street blown over, umbrellas turning inside out. Next it was dark, dark, dark, the driving rain, the wind, again, the wind...and confusion about where to go, to the cellar, into the hall, as we figured out that it had to be a tornado.

 

Perhaps five minutes later, maybe ten, it was all over. A huge branch down across three backyards (including that of my relatives), the back door jammed shut, leaves blown in through open windows...and then outside, trees down everywhere, everywhere, branches, limbs, the steeple of a church folding a car roof in half.

 

I went outside to take some pictures but was stopped by people coming up from the subway, asking what had happened, others reporting what they'd seen a block or two away, everyone talking to one another, the most unlikely people exchanging information, people who in any other moment would barely look at one another, or worse, be afraid to talk. Instead, old and young, hip and dowdy, from the islands, from New Jersey, black, white, brown, yellow, just so many people talking, all stunned.

 

A tornado in Brooklyn? My mother's hometown. A tornado brings Brooklyn to a halt.

 

 

Ah, Brooklyn

Stunning day yesterday in the best borough. Step out the door and be entertained by the martial arts/music/dance practitioners of Capoeira, performing on the sidewalk on Flatbush. First two pics are the dancers/martial artists; third is their musical accompaniment.

 

Then truck on up the street to Grand Army Plaza where the Farmers Market is now in full swing. Here's just one stall with the most spectacular flowers and herbs.

And then there's this from a nearby street. If only I could upload the aroma of the first lilacs of the year.

Brooklyn's best

Have been collecting notes, via noshes, for great eats in Brooklyn and the outer boroughs, including the one that thinks it's the inner (Mannie), and so a quick round-up:

--Milk Bar, 620 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn. First, coffee lovers, their Flat White, Australian in origin, is just a great cuppa. Then, the Mushroom Toast on multigrain; add a poached egg or two, and you'll come back again and again. As I have. Took some young friends of mine for a walk recently and as they decided to snooze, I settled in for quite a while, drinking said Flat White in the warm sun.

--Bierkraft, 191 Fifth Ave, Brooklyn. This place is so famous that my reviewing it per se makes no sense, but what's new, at least to me, is their serving made-to-order sandwiches on baguettes, none better than the home-baked turkey, that you can actually sit down and eat. Where cash registers once roamed, now there are benches and tables, all very down-home.

--Not in Brooklyn (yes, one does leave eventually) but on the spur of the moment recently, we went to Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown. Oh, boy. Order the soup dumplings. And the scallion pancakes. Enjoy the pandemonium and the other ten people at your table (communal seating).

--And a bit uptown from there and deserving of about 25 posts: Dirt Candy. Another impulsive eating expedition (aka dinner when starving). With one of my very favorite dining partners, we ordered and shared (I'm pulling these straight off the menu): Portobello mousse, truffled toast, pear & fennel compote (even better than it sounds), Crispy tofu with broccoli & broccolini, and orange beurre blanc; and Parsnip gnocchi, creamy root vegetable slaw, carrot crumbs. That I can remember precisely what we ate several weeks later, well, draw your own conclusions. Vegetarian delight and a thrill for the rest of us to realize just how superb eating can be without the customary sacrifice of animal.

Photo from special event in Boston

Walking on words

Library Way, New York
9 PM, March 4, 2010

 

There are 96 of these bronze plaques (Gregg LeFevre, sculptor) mounted in the paving stones along East 41st Street.  Was so busy taking photos in the dark that I didn't notice the NY Public Library until it was time to cross the street. There were dozens of candles lit on the library steps.