11/16/04 Will Brooklyn Contain A Neighborhood for my Heart?; Whole Foods in Union Square!?:

Rich and I went back to Brooklyn AGAIN this evening, with our excitement for our new apartment bubbling over. And, of course, there was still much work to be done. We needed to make sure that the apartment was progressing well for our impending arrival. We wanted to keep looking at the space, brainstorming how we would lay it all out. And we wanted to explore our new neighborhood.

I've long dreamed of feeling like I was part of a neighborhood. And ever since I became too old and jaded about the rich and somewhat snobby bubble of a neighborhood I was brought up in, I have pined for the feelings I once had before that time. The feeling of knowing a place, of being safe as a product of that belonging, of knowing where the center of my universe truly lies. But never have I dreamed about such a place in suburbia. As far as I have been concerned, for as long as I've been thinking about such things, all other suburban neighborhoods are exactly like mine, or too far from New York City to be anything but a hick town. This is most likely not the case, but has remained part of my simplified understanding of the world nonetheless. Keep in mind, a great deal of what I think is true about the world around me comes from movies. This is the case with a startling number of people, I think, all the more startling because unlike alcoholics, they generally don't even know they have that problem. But movies seem to reinforce the stereotypes more than they educate about nuance or variety.... unless, in this case, there is a movie specifically tackling the idea of interesting neighborhoods, a throughline that I have neither heard of nor seen. And so, my simplified and hopefully erroneous understanding of the world has been accidentally reinforced (and I say accidentally because I don't think movie writers set out to do this, rather the intent is simply the result of aggregation). There are movies that take place in a rural stereotype. There are movies that take place in a suburban stereotype. And there are movies that take place in a city stereotype. And that covers almost all of them. TV shows, too. And so there's not a whole heck of a lot of learning about the specifics or charm of any one single place going on in the media. And when the press core comes to town to cover a columbine or a laramy, or a waco, or when tourism shows descend on touristy spots with their star and their cameras, the results can be even more telescopic. [I'm using the word "Telescopic" to mean "abstract" or "distanced from reality", which dictionary.com barely supports, even when I look up synonyms, but i'm going with it anyway.]

And yet, the interesting part, to me, is that this phenomenon results in the act of actually getting to know a neighborhood squarely residing in the realm of "things you can only do in person." I suddenly get to thinking... well, how many "neighborhoods" do I really know? Not many! Not even my own home town, have I ever even seen most locations in except through the glass of a window, largely because of our sick and constant reliance on motor vehicles to get around (a product of the layout of suburbia, more than any specific individuals' intent). And except for my class of cohorts that I moved from 1st to 12th grades with, an odd slice of the population, most of whom I only knew by their "reputation" and not by their individual character, I actually don't know most of the people in my neighborhood either. If someone said that they were from Roslyn, it would still be a shot in the dark's chance of me really knowing anything about them at all. And so I know few to no neighborhoods in person, even though I've driven through many in my lifetime, and seem even more portrayed on TV and in Film. I have the perception that I know a great deal of neighborhoods, and in reality, I know unbelievably few.

And part of my New York City dream has been long caught up in my simultaneous dream to experience a neighborhood that I truly feel that I belong to. And since I've been young enough to play with chalk and get away with it, I have not felt comfortable walking down the street in most parts of my old town, where there aren't even sidewalks, and even in some places where there are. But in the city.... it's a whole other ballgame.

In a city, simply the act of exploring a neighborhood can give one the sense of actually participating in it. This is the case merely because that's how people exist in and get around the neighborhood... they walk. And walking, as compared to driving, affords a great deal more chance for serendipitous interaction than driving through a neighborhood that's used by driving. Serendipity is an important word to define when dealing with the concept of city versus suburb. Serendipity is defined as "The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident." A street performance. Seeing someone you know, or seeing someone you don't know twice, but recognizing them. Observing an interaction between other people that tickles the mind or the imagination. Finding a shop, or the items within that shop, that inspires a need that one did not previously know existed. Serendipity seems to often be intricately tied to the act of traveling and finding, for you cannot accidentally find something very easily if you're not moving about. In fact, I'm pleased to have read on about the word: "

Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that “this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word.” Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of “a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of....”

And so it was as the three princes traveled that they had these discoveries... and you can sure as hell bet that they weren't driving around in a bloody car!

So, living in a city, and the potential for serendipity, one of the more desirable aspects of neighborhood life, I would like to think, seem to go hand in hand. And yet, I have managed to live in 4 locations on the Island of Manhattan, and have still avoided, for the most part, the sensation of belonging to a neighborhood. My freshman year, I was too in awe of the city itself to feel like I belonged anywhere in it. That confidence comes with time and some practice; learning the street smarts for a particular locale. And besides, at that time, my residence in the city was very tenuous, moving home to Long Island for 4 months after every 8 months. Living on the edge of Chinatown where it meets the Civic Center my Sophomore year was like having the choice between one closed store and another, much of the time. Both neighborhoods became desolate during the very hours that I would have come to feel at home outside my building. And my Junior, Senior and Post-Senior years located me in the Financial District, a place famous for being far more financial than homey. Every time I wanted to go to get something to eat, I would find myself on a subway train, a visitor, in other people's back yard watering holes.

And now, suddenly, for the past few days, I feel something very different as I walk these unfamiliar Brooklyn streets. I'm seeing signs, everywhere, of the kind of mix of city life and neighborhood comfort that I long have sought. Children playing almost everywhere I turn in the afternoon. Steady sidewalk traffic through many hours of the night, never overwhelming, never desolate. A collection of people walking around and eating in restaurants that appear at first glance to be much more noticeably seeking out the same things that I have come to recently seek than the equivalent crowds in Manhattan. Here, there is a general pace that's fast enough to provide the excitement of the city, but slow enough to feel the relief from the ulcer-tempo island of Manhattan. Even the traffic lights take a noticeably longer amount of time between their cycles here. I am already constantly seeing people saying hello to one another as they pass by, some because they know each other from the neighborhood, other's because they just happen to be passing by, and aren't in too much of a rush to notice, or because there's just not quite enough people around to ignore everyone that is. And then, of course, there's the setting. Park Slope, I understand, was famous in the 1880's for being the same beautiful residential neighborhood that it still is. Rows of Brownstones that communicate seamlessly with their neighboring buildings, much in the way you hope the people inside those buildings do. They allow for semi-public, semi-private spaces that give neighborhoods their very existence, in the form of the many front steps, the stoops, where people still sit outside and chat and play, even with the advent of air conditioning and mass media. The mature trees that have thrived in their concrete-surrounded plots create canopies on the side streets that accentuate the feel of semi-private semi-public spaces, by creating the sense of being both outside in the air, but protected with a ceiling of leaves that brings the space down to a human scale.

Will I play out on these streets? Probably not. I'll be working a lot, walking to and fro, getting things done. But perhaps this is a better question: Will I feel a part of the playtime of others if I come to recognize their faces as I begin to frequently pass by? I probably will. I hope I do. That's enough for me. It's been nice, in Manhattan, to get to know the faces of the buildings that I pass. To become familiar with the spaces within an area is certainly nice. But to live in a place that offers human faces to go along with those of the buildings may be a whole lot nicer. And so, as I walk around my future neighborhood now, and I see the many faces of those who play on the streets, who sell their goods on the sidewalk, who frequent or run the little ma-and-pa shops and eateries that I have found in abundance here, I wonder how much a part of my future life in this neighborhood they will be. And I wonder if this place, in this Borough of my grandparents' youth, will contain within its boundaries what I have been looking for in my big city all along.

Time will tell.

One fun place we stumbled upon was this mom-and-pop version of "subway." It's called city sub, and I will later find out that the owner used to be a sushi chef, but now devotes his culinary attention to detail to the creation of the best sandwiches in Brooklyn! I look forward to trying it out! And I'm just overjoyed by the idea of a sushi chef throwing away his maki's, instead focusing those same skills on creating well balanced sandwiches. Ha!

Some guys were doing construction at the new apartment, so we were able to get in. The sunset from the upper balcony is fantastic!

Rich notices that the range has a backing that goes higher than the counter, and we begin to wonder if the idea of having the stove face the common room comes along with the curse of having to look at the back of this ugly thing all the time. We call management, and they tell us that they will give us a slab of the same marble the counter is made of to serve as a back splash. Whew.

Back in Manhattan, we notice that a Whole Foods is going to open in January... so even if we don't find a supermarket we like in Brooklyn, we are literally 2 subway stops away (on the N train) from this Whole Foods (and the rest of Union Square for that matter, which is fantastic!)

Rich dreams of the many dishes he will create... after they open.