Thursday, May 10, 2012

A night out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

At the corner of Wyeth and N. 9th Street, a red brick remnant of an earlier neighborhood


Go one block west and your at the East River, this view showing the new World Trade Center in the foggy distance. What were they thinking when they selected this building plan? Why this graceless monolith?

The East River Ferry, as the sign says. One day soon I will take a ride. It's public transit, but I don't think my metrocard will work.

A view of lower Manhattan with the Empire State Building nudging the top right corner.

This is one of a handful of places where you can walk right up to the river's edge. There's even the tiniest sand bar, so unlike the meeting points in Manhattan, where all is either expressway, parks for tourists (and residents), high maintenance landscaping, and maybe a remnant of a dock or two, if they haven't all been torn down by now.

Where gentrification meets Williamsburg - condos on the waterfront, complete with solar-powered street lamp.

The bar at the indiescreen cinema on Kent @ S. 2nd St., still in Williamsburg, and it's attendant cave-like architecture. Cold, but something about it captured my imagination. A bunker, of sorts.



The blue-lit subterranean bar.



Through the doors of the bunker, a more mundane world.

On the way home, 11:35pm

Walking to the G-Train down Metropolitan Ave., then I found a car service...

The long hallway to the restroom, and back again, at the car service HQ.


The dispatcher's window, a car outside with a message, "Vive tu vida, no la MIA." Good advice.



The ride home, a rainy night, and some nice colours flying by.


The J-Train el on Broadway in Bushwick.



Beautiful Bushwick, soon enough to be gentrified and looking more like Williamsburg, unfortunately.






Back to Bed-Stuy, almost home.

Next day, coming back from the post office I take a closer look at a mural



I've passed this mural on Throop Ave. at Gates, in Bed-Stuy, a million times and have never fully grocked it. A singular presence in a neighborhood of Black History murals.

A cop in a mini-car parks, going the wrong way on a one-way street, directly in front of a car waiting at the red light. What is the proper etiquette here, I mean to keep one from getting arrested?

The lowliest deli in the neighborhood, Throop Ave. and Quincy, Bed-Stuy.