Wednesday, May 7, 2008

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This is what I see when I stand in front of our house and look up:



And here's our brick house; apparently, before the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway cut the nabe off from the water, it was located down by the docks, and went through several incarnations as a boarding house and a house of ill-repute (or so they say). It still has the peculiar little warreny rooms and our bedroom has the original tin ceiling.



I drove around Brooklyn doing errands, and ran into a horrendous traffic jam right here:




I panicked and booked, going the wrong way down a one-way street to escape the foul fumes and claustrophobia. Going a different route, I passed this off-duty lunch truck. "White & Hot"? Maybe there's actually a little disco in there:



And this guy, the angry gorilla who presides over a used-car lot. I'm not sure what the advertising concept is. Is he freaking out over the amazing deals? Or is it more like a threat--he'll chase you down if you pass up the amazing deals?


And the wonderful ruined bathhouse, haunted with the ghosts of nude old men:



And a 3rd Avenue mural:



4 comments:

bindhiya said...

Dear leah,
This is a great post..
I love the photos...
♥ & ((hugs))
bindi

Anonymous said...

It makes a drive so much more enjoyable to be able to point a camera at all the cool things you see... i took some in the west of ireland last week. i can't quite imagine a tin ceiling!

Knitting it Out in an Urban Zoo said...

What great photos! It looks like the gorilla is surrounded by Pride Flags...very very curious ad concept.

Thanks for the tour of your day in Brooklyn, it was fun.

Leah said...

Hey CG--I was wondering about the flags. First I thought, cool, the giant gorilla is waving Pride flags along Hamilton Avenue! Then I realized that the folks at Ye Olde Used Car Lot probably just thought of them as festive rainbow flags with no other association--I agree, curious ad concept!

Peitseoga--the tin ceiling is a bit peculiar, a feature of some old houses. It's tin "tiles" stamped with patterns and nailed over the ceiling. Ours is painted now, but it used to be bare metal. I'm not sure why people put up these ceilings, but now I'm curious and will have to research it. Oh, and Mary Kay is like Avon--cosmetics sold by (mostly ladies) out of their homes, like Tupperware.

Bindi! Hey gal. Thanks for stopping by. I think it's so cool you're hanging out in the library with Serene. The Brooklyn libraries are not so great, but when we go upstate, there's the best library there with an awesome, peaceful, well-stocked children's room--we can happily sit there for hours.