You are currently browsing articles tagged brooklyn.
Walking down Marcus Garvey boulevard, I was surprised to come across what for all the world looked like a giant castle. It’s not exactly what you’d expect to see in the midst of faded brownstones and tiny bodegas.
A bit of research revealed the building, currently called the Pamoja House, is an armory built in 1922 currently serving as a homeless shelter and temporary home for the Black Veterans for Social Change.
Tags: brooklyn, castle, Medival Times
What was supposed to be a brief jaunt turned into an epic walk past the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a series of partially refurbished, mostly abandoned buildings once a center of shipbuilding, down to Dumbo, the annoyingly-acronymed area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Actually that’s not quite correct; as the acronym puts it, Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. See How Utterly Twee Usurious Persons Rain Errors About Local Topography Over Random Spots.
I came across this delightful Citroen truck and began snapping pictures, only to have an old man wearing naught but a stained tank top pop his head out and start shouting ‘what kind of car is that?’ to me.
Well, as it says in giant blue letters on the side ‘Citroen’, and I am mildly familiar with that brand of vehicle, I am going to guess it’s a Citroen, sir. He then kept yelling I had to take a photo of the registration on the front. I’m not sure why, but here you go:
I then quickly scuttled around the corner as he yelled for me to come back and powerwalked the next couple blocks until coming across this:
Yep, blood! Not sure from what or why, but as numerous opportunities were missed this winter to snap a shot of frozen bloodsicles hanging from the local ‘live chicken’ dumpster, this seemed an excellent opportunity to make up for the loss. Blooooooood.
Just before the metal steroid bull, a group of cartoonishly buff guys worked out on what looked like wood and metal torture racks in the park. Some of the racks are in the background.
Though there is a section of the Navy Yards refurbished and filled with modern offices, the majority of it looks like this- slowly decaying shells of buildings being reclaimed by vines.
Even just before entering the fancy new section (which had a guard post in front of it), these crumbling towers stood sentinel. The guard, presumably lacking anything better to do, kept poking his head out and glaring like I wore a shirt that said ‘TALIBAN PHOTOGRAPHER’ on it.
Further along, towards (sigh)Dumbo, the neighborhood became very quaint, more like New Hope, PA (hippie central meets Colonial Williamsburg) than downtown Brooklyn. A vast electric plant sat at the water’s edge looking like Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ album cover.
I’m also glad to see they time travel responsibly.
Tags: abandoned buildings, brooklyn, walking about
I consider myself a fairly thrifty person, and a large part of my penny-pinching includes getting most of my entertainment from public libraries. Reserving stuff online to your nearest branch makes it easy to watch, say, all of ‘The Prisoner’ at one’s leisure, but sometimes the entertainment comes from the library itself.
Perusing the shelves I noticed some…interesting choices in classification, including Borat’s guide to Glorious Kazakhstan amongst the travel guides.
Normally I avoid large groups of kids like the plague, but I’ll make an exception to check out the reaction of those going on Erik’s Reptile Edventure., especially once the inevitable salamander gets loose.
Forget the illegible sticker tag (and aren’t sticker tags a tad lazy?), check out the small scrawl above. Someone just learned to print and is proud of their skills.
Now this is a proper tag. I’m thinking it’s either by ‘You Go Girl’ or ‘Read UP!’; this example’s right on the Gowanus.
Heading into Manhattan on a K-Mart run, I saw this tape fossil embedded in the sidewalk. When did it get there? How long has it been there? Will the day come when someone comes across it having no idea what a tape is? Is there anyway they can determine whether it was a Wham! cassette?
K-Mart in New York is an anomaly; the familiarity of suburbia run through the filter of a city’s poorly-lit corner deli. The strangest part is I haven’t seen a K-Mart out in suburbia in ages; Target sort of took over, making the one by Astor place seem akin to the few remaining porn shops around Times Square-seediness from a passing era.
Above we have two objects towards the same purpose- deep fryin’ food. Why then is the open, presumably more fire-hazardous one the ‘GranPappy’ while the lidded, poor attempt at futuristic design the ‘CoolDaddy’? Are grease burns vintage?
Snow Dog!
Snowpocalypse Twenty-Ten (Snowmageddon’s just not doing it for me) really was a killstorm, with one man dead and one severely injured due to falling branches. Being indoors for 3 days straight in a teeny apartment ensured a bad case of Cabin Fever, but with the very sky threatening doom, what to do? Visit one of the city’s enormous museums, accessible by subterranean transportation, of course! (New Yorkers are a step away from becoming Morlocks in terms of how easy avoiding sunlight is).
The Met’s recreation of a Babylonian king’s hall always makes me nervous, due to watching ‘The Neverending Story’ as a kid:
Tags: babylonian gods, brooklyn, history, tags
I can’t say what’s more annoying, that there’s a site called ‘The Stoop’ to chat about ‘local stuff’ or that it’s all Fort Greene/Clinton Hill bunk. They’re worried about whether schools are gender neutral enough or if the Bikrahm Yoga program they’re in is green, I worry if nearby buildings will be torched out of boredom. A 10 minute walk and worlds away.
Tags: brooklyn, pretentiousness, you're not william safire nytimes blogroll
I believe I’ve found a store that out-Puerto-Ricos the actual island of Puerto Rico:
aaand a closer view:
Anything you can conceive of, they have with a combination of a coqui, Puerto Rican flag, the phrase ‘boricua’, or a small child wearing any of the above in conjunction with the aforementioned, available and waiting.
At a nearby bakery these two cakewrecks beckoned from the window-
Both seem to be….missing something vital to understanding the cake’s purpose.
I also attended a fun show with visuals by Your Friend Matthew, but left early because I am a party pooper. Look how pretty!
For the full effect, here’s a video:
