warm and sunday

It took me less than an hour to get to Brooklyn and find a parking spot across the street from Jess & Tommy's apartment. This includes a horrible detour on the way to the Holland Tunnel, and the time it took me to interrupt a cop who was reading his newspaper, to ask him where I was.
Fast forward to Red Hook, Brooklyn (this is a fascinating site) - a gritty-being gentrified-section of the city with cobblestone streets and no subway. You can get there on foot, by bike, car or bus - but not by train.  There was a hope to bring back the trolleys, or even to establish a trolley museum - but oh, dear. Here they sit - sadly rusting away.

an interior shot

The building you see behind them used to be a  dilapidated warehouse - Van Brunt Stores.  Wasn't it beautiful? My kind of building.

Today, I don't know what is on the upper floors but the first floor is a to-die-for Fairway market.  The most gorgeous selection of fish, meat, cheeses, coffee, organic and regular produce, and groceries from every part of the world. 

 The building has all these wonderful shutters that we couldn't figure out - except maybe they were hurricane shutters because the building is right on the water?  A mystery. Here it is from the back.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  After Jess and I shared a delicious IKEA 99 cent breakfast of bacon, eggs, and home fries  (biggest bargain on planewe spent a couple of hours looking at kitchen cabinets, etc. and got a lot of good ideas.   We finally got out of there and headed for Fairway, where we had lunch outside on the water.  After lunch, pictures.

 Lady Liberty

the mother

the daughter

                                 the tugboat with the Verrazzano Bridge

The Waterfront Museum barge

and that's all she wrote.  It was a gorgeous day, well spent. Tomorrow, the studio (hooray!). Rachel and I are going to try our hands at my new Akua-Kolor relief inks, paper, and the press - and see what happens.