What follows is probably too autobiographical, and certainly more bloggy than usual for this blog, but I hate to waste a piece of perfectly good writing–good, not necessarily in terms of quality, but meaning a text already written, never distributed, hanging out in an obscure file folder taking up space (if 105KB counts as taking up space). […]
The darkness wasn’t confined to the edge of town, but there was something startling about seeing it there, at the edge of the island, on the bikeway, in the gloaming. North of 34th Street the lights were on; south of 34th Street they weren’t. At twilight you could still make out the distinctive profile of […]
I’ve been contemplating the extremities of Flatbush Avenue because recently I spent a couple of days at Floyd Bennett Field, just off the road’s southern terminus, the last exit before the bridge to the Rockaways. Actually, I spent a couple of nights at Floyd Bennett Field, too. Not because I have a particular passion for […]
Stay on Flatbush Avenue long enough in either direction and eventually you hit water, but it wasn’t always like that. One of Brooklyn’s oldest streets, Flatbush Avenue used to be landlocked. In the 17th century it was a country road connecting disparate Dutch farming villages, including Vlacke Bos, from which the avenue takes its name. In […]
When I work at home, I sit at my computer facing west (northwest, to be precise, as the island of Manhattan transgresses the cardinal points), just across the living room from a large window. The view is buildings and more buildings, mainly tenements and towers, plus a sliver or two of the Hudson. From the […]