Forget Duane-Reade . . .

. . . You know that you're just an ordinary neighborhood after all when the nail salons begin moving in. Haha!



That's down near the L train station on Bedford Ave. Not a great picture but I took it on a whim one evening walking home. Same with the shot below.



The now notorious Duane-Reade up on Bedford Ave. near North 3rd Street that opened last week.

As usual, the New York Times aims to put it all in perspective for you . . .

Williamsburg and the Chain Stores

Some random thoughts:

I am not a big Duane-Reade fan at all. There's nothing wrong with their products except that they're usually a little more "white bread" than I like. What annoys the hell out of me is that they aim to monopolize the drug store business in New York City.

It's like the old Model T, you could have any color car you wanted . . . as long as it was black.

You can go to any drug store you want, no one is stopping you . . . as long as it's a Duane-Reade.

There is a Duane-Reade three blocks away on Kent Avenue. People need a D-R on each corner?

Also, I like Anthony at King's; he's a nice, friendly guy who makes you feel like you're really appreciated as a customer.

Yes, we could use another supermarket in the neighborhood to balance C-Town and Tops, but Food Emporium is hardly the low cost chain I would welcome. Instead of two pricey supermarkets, we would have three.

We're only a couple of stops from Union Square on the L. Food Emporium, Trader Joes, Whole Food, Garden of Eden, and scads of other places. Nor are we that far from all the stores of Greenpoint and the Greenmarket in McCarren Park, so we don't lack for variety, just variety right around the corner.

Now let me go and check out that Facebook page!

The Boycott Duane-Reade Facebook page is interesting because there is a lot of give and take there about those wanting to boycott Duane-Reade maybe being not a hell of a lot better than anyone else; wanting to keep the high end little food shops and boutiques, and having displaced the old neighborhood residents and caused higher rents just as newcomers are supposed to be doing now.

It reminds me about all the brouhaha over Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village going co-op and pushing the longtime middle class renters out in favor of the newly rich who can afford higher prices; but no one remembers that ST-PCV themselves displaced a lot of lower-income people when blocks of housing were condemned and demolished to make room for the middle class renters.

Marathon

Lately, I've been feeling a bit like Old Mr. Grace; I don't get around much anymore. Between my plantar fasciitis (it wasn't a bone spur after all), which is improving with the new sneakers I bought, and the, apparently irremediable, breakdown of my PC, my blog hasn't been doing too well lately.




A lot of photos are stuck on the hard drive of the PC. I hope I can rescue them when I get the new PC but that remains to be seen.



At least I didn't have to walk too far to watch the marathon pass through Williamsburg, just a block. And I was able to download some photos and videos to a friend's laptop, burn them to a CD, and take them to my office Mac to upload at lunchtime. A roundabout way of doing things but better than nothing.



So here are some random photos and videos of the NYC Marathon as it passed Grand Street and Bedford Avenue yesterday morning. I think my friend with the laptop took much better photos (he has a much better camera) that I may add later.



That bakery in the background of the video (and the top photo), La Villita, is the best little bakery in the neighborhood, owned and operated by a bunch of wonderful people.

Just to keep my hand in

A cute Brooklyn story that only requires a link, not anything from my computer:

The Diva's Ashes

SIGH!

>

A blog already plagued by fits and starts because of the laziness of blogger may have just received something akin to a death blow: my PC stopped working last week. Right now, I have no idea what’s wrong or how to fix it and I don’t foresee continuing this blog for some time since all of my photos are on the PC.

Stalled in Fort Greeneton Hill

Before I dredge up a few more summer memories and continue my walk to Bay Ridge . . . that vegetative church tower in Bed-Stuy prompted me to keep my eyes peeled for more of the same and, sure enough, I found another one nearby here in Williamsburg,

North 6th St, between Driggs and Bedford Aves.

This is, or was, the Church of St. Vincent de Paul on North 6th Street in Williamsburg, but I don't know for how long.


The front of the church is already blocked off with scaffolding and wire fencing and the omens do not appear favorable. Maybe the congregation is just preparing to repair the church fabric but this being what you might call ground zero of the glass box co-op building, it seems more likely that another old church will make the ultimate sacrifice that the trenderatti might live and prosper. But I hope not; maybe they can find another income-producing use for it.

So where was I a few weeks ago? Wandering Clinton Hill, I guess.

I don't generally take a lot of pictures in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene despite being through there so much. Sometimes I think the place is so damn picturesque that I just want to buy some postcards and have done with it. If I started taking pictures I'd never stop, there would always be "just one more." And even though they are two separate neighborhoods and had separate histories, today they really form one large super historic and photogenic neighborhood . . . Fort Greeneton Hill or something.

These photos were not all taken on the day of the walk to Bay Ridge but over the course of the spring and summer from late May through July.

Washington Ave. near Greene Ave.

You could spend a lot of time going through Clinton Hill and taking note of all the different styles of architecture from different periods and matching different houses with various well-known capitalists from Brooklyn's past who lived in them, but that's more than I want to take on at the moment. I just enjoy walking through the area and looking.


Washington Ave. near Greene Ave.

Clifton Place at St. James Place; Adelphi Academy

Adelphi Academy was founded by Charles Pratt who also founded Pratt Institute.

Clifton Place at St. James Place

It is now part of Pratt Institute.

Clifton Place at St. James Place

I didn't quite get Clifton Place included on the map below. Toward the bottom right, just off St. James Place you can see a capital C, that's Clifton Place; what looks like a large, gray capital I on that corner is the Adelphi Academy.



Another college in that neighborhood is St. Joseph's, centered on Clinton Ave. The following buildings don't all belong to St. Joseph's (one belongs to Pratt) but they are all part of a fairly cohesive few blocks from, maybe, Myrtle Ave. to Lafayette Ave. (And beyond; after crossing Lafayette going toward Fulton St. the homes are equally attractive, I just don't happen to have any photos handy to drop in here.) Most of these are between Willoughby and DeKalb Avenues.

Part of St. Joseph's College


Part of Pratt

This one, I think, is the residence of the bishop of Brooklyn (Rom. Cath.)


Those above belong to Pratt Institute.






This little beauty (below) is around the corner at Vanderbilt Ave. and Lafayette Ave.




Paul Robeson Theater, Greene Ave. bet. Adelphi St. & Carlton Ave.


Paul Robeson Theater, Greene Ave. bet. Adelphi St. & Carlton Ave.


Some other older frame houses . . . when the living was easy . . .


South Oxford St. bet. Fulton St. & Atlantic Ave.


Cumberland St. bet. Lafayette Ave. and Greene Ave.

Cumberland St. bet. Lafayette Ave. and Greene Ave.


Adelphi St. bet. Lafayette Ave. & Greene Ave.

Lafayette Ave. bet. Adelphi St. & Clermont Ave.


And to end for tonight . . .

Clermont Ave. bet. De Kalb Ave. & Willoughby Ave.


Clermont Ave. bet. De Kalb Ave. & Willoughby Ave.


Willoughby Ave. bet. Clermont Ave. & Vanderbilt Ave.


And to all a good night!

On to Clinton Hill

I think when last I left these posts, I was on my way from Bed-Stuy into Clinton Hill. Real time and walk time are usually so far apart that if it weren't for my razor sharp memory along with the audio files attached to my photos, I wouldn't know where I was.

The cute little house below is a block away from the final photos in the last post. Close one eye and it looks almost like a miniature Bates Motel house.

Cambridge Place near corner of Gates Ave.

And a block away from Cambridge Place, at St. James Place, a block party was getting into full swing.

Gates Avenue and St. James Place

Gates Ave. and St. James Place

With the sudden beautiful weather that weekend, that Saturday was the day for block parties, outdoor gate sales, yard sales, whatever. A block from St. James Place is Washington Ave., rightly noted for its brownstones and other remnants of the Gilded Age.

There are two large churches in that area and one of them, the Brown Memorial Church, was having its own church street sale that day.

Brown Memorial Church, Gates and Washington Aves.

Brown Memorial Church, Gates and Washington Aves.

Brown Memorial Church, Gates and Washington Aves.

I was going to say that Clinton Ave. was a block away but I generally forget that Waverly Ave. lies between them. It's not a prominent street and I for one tend to forget it's there until I cross it. So, two blocks farther on is Clinton Ave., the street that gives the neighborhood its name.

This young man was sitting alongside the sidewalk on Clinton Avenue between Greene and Gates Aves. giving an impromptu recital. I think he and his girlfriend were setting up another small yard sale. I asked to take his picture, which he politely allowed me to do. I explained to both that I had this blog and might want to add the photo to the blog. But I warned them that for me, keeping up with the postings was difficult and maybe I wouldn't get to it right away. Well, here it is. Only a month later. That's nothing when I think of all the walks from last summer that I never covered here at all!

Washington Ave. between Gates and Greene Aves.

This photo points up a great thing about the Clinton Hill neighborhood, it's a great place for casual strolling. To me, it has always seemed to be to be a very neighborly sort of place; a kind of tip-your-hat, stop-and-chat nabe. Technically it ends in another block at Vanderbilt Ave. where Fort Greene begins, but in reality the two neighborhoods blend into each other seamlessly.

Speaking of Vanderbilt Ave., I want to throw in a couple of shots here from an earlier walk. Actually, it wasn't a walk at all, it was from two mid-week forays to the library after work by bus; mid-May and mid-June, the last a quiet summer evening, just two days past Midsummer Eve, my favorite time of the year.

Vanderbilt and Park Aves.

Whenever I take the bus to the library (either for lack of time or bad weather), I transfer to the B69 right across the street from these houses, so I've had plenty of time to enjoy them in all weather at different times of the year. But mid-Summer for me is the most magical time.

Vanderbilt and Park Aves.

According to the nyc.gov map I use, the houses date from between 1840 and 1850. To me they are three little gems, yet they are right on the edge of what was the industrial section of that part of Brooklyn, and only a block away from the Navy Yard, so probably when they were built they were just three unassuming laborers houses looked down on by the gents further up in Clinton Hill.

Vanderbilt and Park Aves.

I should say "two" little gems since two of them have been restored but the corner one is still pretty much of a shack.

Now before I end for tonight (since it's getting pretty late), I want to add that other prominent church I spoke of earlier. It is an enormous church on Clinton Ave. between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave., St. Luke & St. Matthew.

Since I cut up through Clinton Hill and Fort Greene whenever I walk to the library, these buildings have become like old friends I use to mark my progress.

Clinton Ave. between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave.

Next time . . . on to Bay Ridge . . . or at least South Brooklyn.

Jumping Feline Part 2

Side trip from May


Quincy Street looking from Franklin Ave. to Bedford Ave.

Way back at the beginning of May, when summer held such great promise, I was wandering through that neighborhood from my previous post, but a block away on Quincy Street. I won't say the difference is like night and day but a block away it is less commercial, more settled and comfortable, and possibly a little more immune to the scourge of redevelopment. Which is not to say that the occasional brownstone or row house doesn't fall prey to a developer. All I did was turn 180 degrees to take these two pictures. Why don't they ever attempt to make it blend?

Quincy St. looking toward Franklin Ave.

Just up at the corner of Franklin Ave. across the street from that gray box is my kind of building; colorful, decorated, interesting to look at. What is there to see in those other boxes after you've glanced at them once?

Quincy St. at Franklin Ave.

In fact, walk around the corner to the left and you will find a house that almost burned down.

Franklin Ave. between Quincy St. and Gates Ave.

It's a measure of my dislike of the ubiquitous blue or green glass and steel boxes or concrete boxes that even that half-burned out house looks better to me than anything that gets built today.

And next to that is the Evening Star Baptist Church that is boxy and looks like it might be faced with cement and but is still a better building than anything being thrown up these days.

Gates Ave. at Franklin Ave.

And on the opposite corner is another favorite building of mine in that neighborhood.

Gates Ave. at Franklin Ave.

Walking down Gates toward Classon I found this quirky and colorful building. Too quirky and too colorful to last too much longer, probably. Why keep something like this when you can replace it with a perfectly bland and colorless nonentity?

Gates Ave. between Franklin and Classon Aves.

At the end of that block, at the corner of Gates and Classon Aves. is, to be fair, a building that almost makes it, almost fits in. But hey, let's not make it a mellow red like the rest of the block, let's make it stand out, a nice cold banker's gray. So chic and so "now" you could almost faint from sheer emotion.

Franklin Ave. at Classon Ave.

But then there is this mellow neighborhood church, the Mt. Zion Tabernacle, a block away at Franklin Ave. and Irving Place.

Franklin Ave. at Irving Place

But, walk a couple of more blocks to Grand Ave. at Gates where we left off last time and, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. We're in Anytown USA, circa nineteen-aught-one, we are, except for those damn cars, In the Good Old Summertime, where a young man with a straw boater and a striped blazer will run down those steps any moment.

Grand Ave. between Gates and Putnam Aves.

Grand Ave. between Gates and Putnam Aves.

Grand Ave. between Gates and Putnam Aves.

Grand Ave. between Gates and Putnam Aves.

We are, in fact, wandering into Clinton Hill, where we'll get back to my July walk next time.