Wednesday Brooklyn

This morning I caught the subway ( except when it went over the  Manhattan Bridge it wasnot ‘sub’ ) to Brooklyn. Brooklyn is made up of a whole lot of small neighbourhoods and it is hard for a first time visitor to tell the boundaries.  I went first to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens . I am not sure if it was a special ‘small kids get in free’  day. But there were many many groups of very well behaved small children. I got a map when I entered that was very comprehensive, but had no scale, a pet peeve of mine.  I will forgive the guy who took my ticket who I asked ‘how far is it from here to here’ as I pointed.  He said , with the biggest smile possible for a large black man ( and that is pretty big) ‘How should I know, I only work here’.

There were different gardens  - a herb garden, a Shakespeare garden with plant labels and quotes referring to the plant, a fragrance garden etc. One of the major features of the garden is a group of cherry trees, most of which are just about to come out in flower. They hold, every year, a cherry blossom festival. I wandered around the pond with a Japanese style tea house and Shinto shrine.  Despite the lovely trees – cherry trees that were out and magnificent magnolia trees, the highlight for me was a ‘treehouse’ called Sandy Remix. It is a tree house made from the wood of 14 types of  trees, blown over by Sandy, by the ‘master tree house artist’ ( according to the sign) Roderick Romero. 

Then it was morning tea time. The menu said  ‘Gorilla coffee’ . I asked, of course, if I turned into a gorilla if I drank it. With a straight face she replied’ Depends on how you react to coffee’ .  Gorilla coffee is roasted in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn museum, around the corner, was my next stop. It is known for its Egyptian collection, but I ran out of interest before I got to that.  I looked at the galleries showing works of American artists. I discovered Georgia o’Keefe when I got to Washington last year and bought a last postcard of her painting of Manhattan.  Today I saw another  one she did that appealed to me – Brooklyn Bridge. There were replica rooms of different sorts of houses in different time periods in different parts of the country that I found interesting. I looked at a historical display  of quilts. There was an interesting installation of many skateboards placed in an area of floor. They were individual covered in bits of Muslim prayer mats. Cross culture. There was another installation of a whole set of plates and cutlery and serving dishes suspended from the ceiling as though they were positioned correctly around a table , but they had all been flattened.. It was called ‘30 pieces of silver’. The artist is , according to the blurb, interested in death and resurrection. I did not count the number of pieces.   Then it was lunch time and there was a long queue for a simple sandwich thing.

Then I walked through several different neighbourhoods to Fort Greene. After a bit of toing and froing due to an out-of-date website, I collected my tickets to Saturday’s performance of Julius Caesar that I  had booked.  Then I walked some more to a café that was written up in the CT . They make flat whites.  I had one and a muffin and wlked some more to a subway station and came home.

This evening I had a nice dinner at a ‘french mediterranean’ restaurant in the same block. I had a good window seat t watch the passing parade

I saw a car  - same  propotions as a  mazda 6 but bigger –  with hood down reverse very quickly into a space just outside the window near me. The number plate said LAWYER93. A bib black guy climbed out. He had overalls and large sunnies ( it was 7pm and the light was fading)  . He went into a shop to the left of me, came out and went to the right out of my vision. Then there was a space in front of him. A car with a light (like a cop car) reversed in and made no attempt not to bump into BBG’s car.. Driver got out, looked around for a while then went into a shop on the left. He came out and put the light back into his car and disappeared to the right out of my vision.  BBG returned and got into his car, pulled out into the traffic with no regard for anyone else. Much horn tooting. He pulled into a space that had come vacant in front of car 2 with about half a car between him and car 2.  I saw nothing for about 5 minutes and then I saw  his car backed back to near car 2, hood was up, petrol tank cover hanging open and an ambulance beside his car with him holding his leg. What happened in 5 minutes.?  I had to leave. This is New York.